As we look over the set of meticulous and practical instructions that we are going to recommend to the retreatant, we should not let ourselves forget what is essential in every prayer. These instructions and these methods are merely the different paths, various ways we use to arrive at the single purpose of prayer. Each person, according to his own good pleasure, should use these means or look for others more suitable either to his temperament or to the grace he has at a particular time.

We should be convinced, however, about these two truths that are mutually dependent on each other: (1) Each one of us has his own way of praying that is strictly his own. (2) Any method of prayer (vocal or mental, ordinary or extraordinary) is not in itself better than any other type. The best method of prayer for me is determined by this particular time, these particular circumstances where I find myself. A simple “cry” toward the Lord, in the way the sick and poor of the Gospel cried, can be better for me, here, at this particular moment, than the most perfect ecstasy (Rom 8:26-27).

The purpose of prayer is to find God at the place where God wants to meet us—in our heart, as the term is used in the Bible, that is, in that secret place of ourselves that is the source of our particular personality, the place where the decisions in our lives are formed and where our destiny is hammered out. Like the high priest in the temple at Jerusalem, the only one who can enter into this “holy of holies” to converse alone with God is oneself.

Every prayer, irrespective of its form, ought to have its origin in the Word of God and its effect in a greater love of God. This is the reason why it is so important to read or call to mind a Biblical text at the beginning of the Exercise and why we must ask God …for his light really to understand it and to gather fruit from it. No prayer is a good prayer unless it is made in Spiritu Sancto: “No one can come to me unless by the Father, who sent me” (John 6:44).

The Exercise proper — meditation, contemplation, application of senses, etc. — will never be more than a deepening of the mystery spoken about in our Biblical text. The Fathers of the Church, commenting on Jacob’s ladder, have already told us that every such exercise is a rung in the Scala Christi, the “Ladder of Christ”, the summit of which is God himself.

Every Scriptural text should be approached, in all freedom, with the sole concern formulated this way by an old exegete: Te totum applica ad textum, rem totam applica ad te (Devote your whole self to the text, and its whole matter to yourself).

The sole criterion for the worth of a person’s prayer is that after finishing it, he ought to live more fully the life of Christ, according to St. Paul’s words: “For me to live is Christ.” Are my faith, my hope, and my charity stronger after my prayer? Yes? Then all was well with my prayer, even if it was dry, distracted, or dreary.