I have been reading and listening to a lot revolving around St. Teresa of Avila. It's something I feel the Lord has been putting on my heart over the past two months (maybe because He knows I'm bad at praying...). I will share with you a few things from what I've read and listened to (from Divine Intimacy radio and their recent program "30 Days with Teresa of Avila") on the necessity and importance of recollecting oneself prior to the actual "praying" part of your time spent with the Lord.
If you are one who struggles with distractions or are one to quickly just jump right into prayer, whether it be your routine formal prayers you like to say or reading from Scripture, then it will be of great profit to your soul to begin this necessary practice of recollection and placing yourself in the presence of God.
Prayer is always a uplifting of the heart to God. It is a convesation with the Beloved, a sweet conversation that touches one's soul. Sometimes it is what you call "dry" in the that it effects no sensible consolations but it is nonetheless good. Yet sometimes this dryness is a result of our lack of preparation for our prayer.
Here is where taking the time to recollect oneself and place oneself in the Divine Presence will be of profit and allow your prayer to bear more fruit.
Prepare thy soul for prayer
"Before prayer, prepare thy soul and be not as a man that tempteth God."
(Sirach 18:23)
When we prepare our soul through recollection and placing ourselves in the Divine Presence of God, we make ourselves aware of Who, really, we are before. It will inspire us in holy fear, awe, reverence, love, and humility. To not do this is a sin against the virtue of religion, St. Thomas Aquinas tells us. St. Thomas says, "the end of religionis to pay reverence to God. Wherefore whatever pertains directly to irreverence forGod is opposed to religion." When we are lacking in our time in prayer, or our laziness or sloppiness in prayer, we sin against the virtue of religion because we really have no idea of Whom we are before and His great majesty and excellence. When we lack preparation for prayer and do not consider to Whom we are really speaking, we are "tempting God" as Scripture points out. "Now it is evident that to tempt a person pertains to irreverence for him: since no one presumes to tempt one of whose excellence he is sure. Hence it is manifest that to tempt God is a sin opposed to religion," St. Thomas continues (Question 97: The temptation of God in the Summa Theologica).
Let us confess our sins against God by our lack of reverence and virtue of religion.
Preparing the soul for prayer
There are 3 things one must do to prepare their soul for its time with the Lord:
1. Place oneself in the presence of God
2. Confess that we are unworthy of being alloewed to appear before Him
3. To ask for the grace to pray, without which we cannot pray well
St. Teresa of Avila strongly advised her nuns to take the time to recollect themselves. She considered this imperative to true and deep prayer. When recollection is wanting, it is we ourselves who are not present in our so-called prayer.
Now, I will quote and paraphrase from a book I'm slowing going through (as I mull it over in my own heart and soul) called "The Ways of Mental Prayer" by Rt. Rev. Dom Vitalis Lehodey. This book is one of the Church's greatest classics on prayer.
Placing onself in the presence of God
The exterior senses, the imagination, the memory, the mind, the heart, and the will - all our faculties - stray away from us, and run about with all of our curiosities, our dreams, our memories, our frivolous thoughts, attachments, and passions. How often our minds and emotions are jumping around!
"Before prayer, therefore, we must gather in our scattered faculties, summon them to prayer, place them in the presence of God Who is within us, but of Whose presence we were not thinking of."
...
"This recollection of our whole soul is of supreme importance in mental prayer. A want of this is the reasonw hy we sometimes lose our time or profit but little [in our prayer]."
Now think of how thoughtlessly we enter the church for Mass and then Mass begins. Think of how thoughtlessly we throw ourselves on our knees to begin praying the Rosary or saying other prayers! Often I might assume (if you're like me at least). The temptation is to become too routine with it all. We truly need to begin by withdrawing our thoughts and heart from low and earthly things and fix them upon God.
Here are some ways to do this, recommended by St. Francis de Sales, quoted in the Ways of Mental Prayer:
1. Consider God's presence everywhere. "He is in everything and every place, nor is there any place of thing in this world wherein He is not by a most real presence. Truly God "is not far from every one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being." He surrounds and envelops us on all sides, we are immersed in Him as a fish in water."
2. Consider His presence in us. God penetrates our whole being and dwells in its every part, imparting to us life and movement. St. Francis de Sales said, "As the soul...resides nevertheless in the heart in a more special manner, so God is in a most particular manner in your heart, and in the very center of your spirit, which He vivifies and animates, being, as it were, the heart of your heart and the spirit of your spirit." This is so beautiful! Lehodey reminds us: "And if we are in the state of grace, our soul is a sanctuary wherein the Holy Trinity dwells, imparting to us divine life, the power to do divine works, light and help to enable us to act after a divine manner."
3. Consider our Savior, who, in His human nature, looks down and from heaven upon all persons in this world. "For although we see Him not, yet from abve He beholds us. It was thus St. Stephen [in the Acts of the Apostles] saw Him at the moment of his martyrdom."
4. By the eyes and the imagination. St. Francis de Sales, quoted again, "The fourth way consists in making use of simple imagination, representing to ourselves Our Savior in His sacred humanity as though He were beside us just as we are wont to represent to ourselves an absent friend." We may picture Him to ourselves in His infancy in his crib, in His hidden or public life, or His cross, or amidst the splendours of His glory, according as to which does us more good, provided that this be done withour any violent strainging, and that we do not confound teh realities of faith with the creations of our own imagination. We may also make use of any statue of pious image, to draw our soul away from the earth and fix it in God.
Finally, St. Francis de Sales advises, "Make use, then, of some one of these four means to place yourself in the presence of God before mental prayer, but there is no need to imploy them all at the same time, you need use only one, and that briefly and with simplicity."
Placing oneself in the presence of God is not some kind of straining effort. It only takes a couple minutes and is very simple. But this will make quite the difference in our prayer and our attentiveness to the interior movements of the Holy Spirit during our time in prayer. When we find our minds gets distracted by one thing or another, just move it back towards God and be at peace. A good priest once taught me the "3 strike rule": If you get distracted, move your heart back towards God. If the same distraction happens two more times, it may be something you are to pray about and bring to the Lord in prayer.
If our whole time is spent drawing our heart and mind back to God after a multitude of distractions assail us, that time in prayer is even filled with even more graces than it would have been if we would have enjoyed consolation because our wills were proven to be faithful and the battle was fought to remain fixed in God.
So pray on warrior!
A last thought from St. Teresa of Avila...
"You ought to make every effort to free yourselves even from venial sin, and to do what is most perfect."