ourselves, and to see how we stand as regards our vocation and the observance of our vows; 2nd, To repair what is past by a good confession or a review of the year, accompanied with a perfect contrition; 3rd, To lay down a rule of life for the future, and to renew our fervour, diminished as it is by the advance of time. It is true that our spiritual exercises ought to sustain and increase our fervour in the service of God; but these valuable instruments of perfection are apt to lose their efficacy by use, and the chief end of the retreat is to impart a fresh vigour to our daily practices of piety, and to lead us to fulfil them better for the future. APPLICATION. These considerations will serve to show the importance of this retreat, and the danger incurred by those who make it carelessly. Has your conscience nothing to reproach you with on this subject? AFFECTIONS and RESOLUTIONS. POINT II. Means of making the Retreat well. CONSIDERATION. To do so, 1st, Think how reasonable it is that you who have laboured for the salvation of others during a whole year should at least take a week to busy yourself exclusively about your own soul; 2nd, Remember that God has from all eternity attached special graces to this retreat: your perseverance, your eternal salvation, may depend upon it; perhaps even it may be His design that it should serve as your preparation for death; 3rd, Excite within yourself an earnest desire of making it well, with a lively confidence that God will enable you to gather abundant fruit from it; 4th, Pray much the more wretched you feel yourself, the greater should be your confidence, joining mor tification to prayer, and having a special devotion to our Blessed Lady. APPLICATION. Think what a rigorous account God will ask you of this retreat Think how many lost souls, had they received such a grace, it would have made saints. Think of your own salvation; think of POINT III. Means of preserving the Fruits of the CONSIDERATION. 1st, To write down clearly, before coming out of retreat, what change you should make in any part of your conduct as regards men, as regards God, and what habits you should adopt for the future as regards God, as regards men; 2nd, To make these points successively the matter of your particular examination; 3rd, To make them the matter of your meditation every Sunday or Monday; 4th, To examine yourself more thoroughly upon them on the day of your monthly retreat, and to give an account of them to your Director. Have you employed these means constantly since your last retreat? APPLICATION. See in what respects you have failed. Take a resolution not to do so for the future, but to be faithful to them till your next retreat. COLLOQUY with our Lord. NOVEMBER 16. ON THE DUTY OF PRAYING ALWAYS. 1st Prel. Imagine our Lord saying to you, 'Pray always.' 2d Prel. Ask for the grace of doing so. POINT I. How we can pray always. CONSIDERATION. A time of danger and temptation was now at hand for the Apostles; more than ever they required to strengthen themselves by prayer. There fore their Divine Master told them to pray always, because in all situations of life grace is needed, either to enable men to strugglé successfully against temptation, or to enable them to fulfil their obligations as Christians or religious. Ask, and it shall be given you,' is the condition imposed by our Lord Himself; hence the maxim, All by prayer; nothing without prayer.' APPLICATION. But in practice how are we to pray always? It can be done in various ways; one is by familiarising ourselves with some ejaculatory prayer, which by frequent use springs from the heart to the lips without the slightest effort. The venerable Louis de Ponte was so accustomed to repeat 'Propter te, For Thy sake, my God,' that his communications with Heaven may be said to have been almost uninterrupted; he, indeed, prayed always. How happy should we be if we were thus ever united to God by prayer! and what strength it would give us in time of temptation! But it is in our power to obtain it, as others have done, but only by constant and generous effort. AFFECTIONS and RESOLUTIONS. POINT II. Against Discouragement in Prayer. CONSIDERATION. The gospel continues: 'We ought always to pray, and not to faint.' The same lesson is contained in the parable which follows-that of the unjust judge, who is for a long time appealed to in vain by a poor oppressed widow. But at length the judge is compelled to do her justice, 'because,' as he says, 'she is troublesome to me, I will avenge her.' APPLICATION. It was very necessary that our Lord, after having exhorted us to pray always, should urge upon us to continue in prayer, and not to give way, as we are often inclined to do, to discouragement and weariness. How many persons who at first prayed with fervour and confidence, finding their petitions unanswered, have lost heart and abandoned prayer! Had the widow of the parable thus acted, she would have obtained nothing. We are often discouraged, besides, by the remembrance of our unworthiness, our faults, and our falls. We should console ourselves by reflecting that nothing is more pleasing to God than the prayer of a humble and contrite heart; that the greater our miseries, the more abundant His mercies; that the promise of our Lord, Ask, and it shall be given you,' proves that it is our prayer and not our merits that draws down on us the favour of Heaven; and that ofttimes, if we do not receive what we have asked, we obtain other and more precious graces. COLLOQUY with our Lord. NOVEMBER 17. THE SUPPER AT BETHANY. 1st Prel. Imagine St. Mary Magdalen anointing our Lord's feet. 2d Prel. Ask for grace to love our Lord as she did. POINT I. The Conduct of St. Mary Magdalen. 6 CONSIDERATION. Mary had anointed the feet of our Lord on a previous occasion, and also in the house of Simon of Bethany, probably the same St. Mark speaks of as Simon the leper. At this second supper, eight days before the Passion, Lazarus being present, Mary,' in the words of St. John, 'therefore took a pound of ointment of right spikenard, of great price, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment.' This holy woman took every opportunity of showing the love and gratitude she bore our Lord. She had formerly taken pleasure in adorning her hair, and in rich perfumes; now she makes a sacrifice of both in His service. APPLICATION. Let us also, following the example of this great penitent, lose no opportunity of showing love and generosity towards our Lord. Let us offer to Him in particular what it costs us most to relinquish, our judgment and our liberty, yielding them up willingly under the yoke of obedience. Let us be, as St. Paul expresses it, 'the good odour of Christ,' diffusing it around us by giving an example of perfect regularity, anointing the feet of our Lord by cherishing in a peculiar manner the poor suffering members of His mystical body. AFFECTIONS and RESOLUTIONS. POINT II. Conduct of Judas. CONSIDERATION. Judas, far from being edified at the holy prodigality of St. Mary Magdalen, vented his vexation in complaints hidden under the mask of charity. 'Why,' said he, 'was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? Now he said this,' adds St. John, not because he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and, having the purse, carried the things that were put therein.' 6 APPLICATION. We are justly indignant at the behaviour of Judas, who, though one of the twelve, has become a thief, a hypocrite, and the censor of his divine Master; whilst we admire the unruffled sweetness of our Lord, who, though He knew the hearts of all men, and that of Judas in particular, abstained from a word of reproach, as if, by sparing his reputation before men, He still hoped to win the traitor back. He merely blamed him indirectly whilst praising Mary Magdalen. 'Let her alone,' He said, 'that she may keep it against My burial; she hath wrought a good work upon Me. Amen I say to you, wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, that also which she hath done shall be told for a memorial of her.' AFFECTIONS and RESOLUTIONS. POINT III. Conduct of the Inhabitants in Jerusalem. CONSIDERATION. These may be comprised in four |