Yet, we must guard from performing the inner prayer as though we were dispatching a business among others, assimilating it to the rhythm of current tasks. We must really loose the spasm of activity and be dominated by the consciousness of departing in our inward prayer towards the superior realm of ultimate being, in radical transcendence of the aims and concerns which habitually rule the course of our thoughts.

All these we must leave behind, pronouncing a nescivi (“I have forgotten”): I will forget everything that was, and is to come; nor think of what lies ahead of me. Whatever I am wont to carry and to hold in my arms I will let fall before Jesus. It will not fall into the void: standing before Jesus, I deliver it all up to Him. Everything belongs to Him: all burdening worries and all great concerns, both mine and those of the souls I love. I am not abandoning them as I would abandon them in seeking diversion: I know that in Jesus they are truly in a safe harbor. When at His call I relinquish and abandon all things, I am not casting them away; on the contrary, I am assigning everything to its proper place.

Inward prayer is the utmost antithesis to all tense activity: we cannot practice it fruitfully unless we succeed in extricating ourselves from the rhythm of affairs to be settled. To preserve that pragmatic attitude during our inward prayer is to falsify the latter’s essence to the point of absurdity.

We must integrate prayer into the events of our day

Also, we must interpolate free moments in the course of our day; moments in which we raise our eyes to God, forgetting everything for a second and experiencing His presence. In the midst of our occupations we should halt from time to time, and turn towards God for a moment, emerging from the world of causae secundae to God, the causa prima—the primary and supreme Reality and Truth, by whom and in whom alone everything unfolds its meaning and realizes its value.

We must remain always conscious of God

Above all, we must resist being swallowed up by the immanent logic of our activities and of the diverse situations in which life places us. Here lies the chief threat to our leading a recollected life. Certainly, we are obliged to respond to the immanent logic of the diverse situations and tasks that face us; but we must never deliver ourselves to them unreservedly.

We must not be possessed by them but remain firmly anchored in God, thus preserving a perspective which enables us to accord every created thing as much only as is due to it in conspectu Dei. This means a permanent struggle which we must renew again and again, in the spirit of St. Peter’s words: “Brethren: be sober and watch” (1 Pet, 5:8).

We must avoid superficial diversions