od in Prayer_.--In prayer there would sometimes
come upon me such a sense of the Presence of God that I seemed to be all
engulfed in God. I think the learned call this mystical experience; at
any rate, it so suspends the ordinary operations of the soul that she
seems to be wholly taken out of herself. This tenderness, this
sweetness, this regale is nothing else but the Presence of God in the
praying soul. At the same time, I believe that we can greatly help
toward the obtaining of God's Presence. We obtain it by considering much
our own baseness, the neglect and the ingratitude we show toward the Son
of God, how much He has done for us, His passion and terrible suffering,
His whole life so full of affliction, by delighting ourselves in His word
and in His works, and such things as these. And if in these reflections
the soul be seized with the Presence of God, then the whole soul is
regaled as I have described. The heart is filled with relenting. Tears
also abound. In this way does the Divine Majesty repay us even here for
any little care we take to serve Him and to be with Him. The life of
prayer is just love to God and the custom of being ever with Him.

(8) _Supernatural Prayer_.--In supernatural prayer God places the soul in
His immediate Presence, and in an instant bestows Himself upon the soul
in a way she could never of herself attain to. He manifests something of
His greatness to the soul at such times: something of His beauty,
something of His special and particular grace. And the soul enjoys God
without dialectically understanding just how she so enjoys Him. She
burns with love without knowing what she has done to deserve or to
prepare herself for such a rapture. It is the gift of God, and He gives
His gifts to whomsoever and whensoever He will. This, my daughters, is
perfect contemplation: this is supernatural prayer. Now this is the
difference between natural and supernatural prayer: between mental and
transcendental prayer. In ordinary prayer we more or less understand
what we say and do. We think of Him to whom we speak; we think about
ourselves and about our Surety and Mediator. In all this, by God's help,
we can do something, so to speak, of ourselves. But in pure supernatural
and transcendental prayer, we do nothing at all. His Divine Majesty it
is who does it all. He works in us at such elect seasons what far
transcends and overtops all the powers and resources even of the renewed
na