In the spiritual life, we are called to engage our bodies and spiritual souls. The different prayer forms of the Church are meant to help and guide us in this process. We cannot separate our bodies from our souls, or vice versa. We can’t pray in one world, but live in another.

The call to vocal prayer can be unsettling to many people today, but it still needs to be done. In order for us to pray vocally with integrity, our vocal prayer must rely on meditation as a foundation. Whatever we say publicly in vocal prayer, we need to be mulling over spiritually in meditative prayer. We must avoid empty words or hollow hearts.

Meditation complements, supplements, and enriches vocal prayer. Meditation is mental prayer. It is of the spiritual soul. As such, it is not as easy form of prayer. While we live in a world of materialism and utilitarianism, it is a struggle to move beyond the physical things of this world and truly pray.

As people who are shaped by our culture, we are easily distracted, struggle with practical atheism, and wonder why we should pray at all. In response, our faith and the beginnings of the spiritual life show us a peace the world cannot give. We are invited to union with God for its own sake and learn true selfless love.

In order for us to see this peace, we have to start the journey and persevere in the struggle.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: “Meditation is above all a quest.”

When our fallen mind and our wayward emotions want the next wave of euphoria, we have to die to ourselves, discipline our emotions, and persevere along the path of meditative prayer.

Our mind can race and lead us to many different things. The fallen mind does not want to sit still and commune with God. We have to dig deep and allow the grace of God to overcome our fallenness and allow the mind to pray. Once purified and restored, the mind desires the things of God and wants to explore his way of love.

The Catechism explains: “The mind seeks to understand the why and how of the Christian life, in order to adhere and respond to what the Lord is asking.”

Such a pursuit is not a comfortable one. The call to prayer is a summons to the things that are above our world. It is an invitation to be with God. This demands a great focus. The Catechism exhorts us: “The required attentiveness is difficult to sustain.”

Our efforts at meditative prayer are helped by several different resources in the Church’s spiritual treasury. We do not have to white knuckle our way through things. We do not have to rely solely on our own mental resources. The task is heavy, but its weight is lightened by certain helps along the way.

The Catechism teaches: “We are usually helped by books, and Christians do not want for them: the Sacred Scriptures, particularly the Gospels, holy icons, liturgical texts of the day or season, writings of the spiritual fathers, works of spirituality, the great book of creation, and that of history the page on which the ‘today’ of God is written.”

The Sacred Scriptures and good spiritual books can help struggling souls to draw closer to God and find the encouragement they need to stay the course and pursue in an active life of prayer. This is especially true of the gospel books, which recount the life and teachings of the Lord Jesus. The gospel books show us that the Lord Jesus was a man of prayer. He is often in prayer, both vocal and mental.

In addition to the Bible and good books, we have icons and religious images. Such gifts can lift up our hearts and motivate our emotions to pray and seek a sustained union with God.

Along with holy images, we have the beauty of creation and the narrative of our own life stories. Each of these show us the providence of God and reveal to us his love and care for us. Such an awareness can lead our souls to seek him and spend time with him.

The various resources of the Church’s spiritual treasury are gifts given to us as we work to begin and deepen in meditative prayer.

For free daily reflections by Fr. Jeff Kirby, please visit DailyDiscipleship.org.