It is admitted by all that a priest must be supereminently a man of prayer, and that the most important form of prayer, both in obtaining what we ask for and in its reaction upon ourselves, is Mental Prayer: yet, strange to say, of all the priest's duties, that of Mental Prayer is the one which is unfortunately too often put in a secondary place, or even neglected altogether. The name usually given to it--Meditation--is unattractive and misleading. It seems to put before one the idea of day-dreaming, and it is possible that all the practice of several years at least in the Seminary has not fully dispelled this idea. In point of fact, the Meditation is only one part, and that by no means the most important, of systematic Mental Prayer. It is a means to an end. Mental Prayer may be defined simply as prayer without a set form of words, and the Meditation is that which is usually--though not always--necessary to set the mind and heart in motion; but the end to be obtained consists of the aspirations of the heart and the acts of the will. It is these which make St. Alphonsus say that it cannot co-exist with sin; [5] and to promise that anyone who practises Mental Prayer for half an hour daily will certainly save his soul. It is to be hoped that now the Church has laid it down definitely as part of a priest's daily duty, greater strictness may be observed by our clergy in practising it with regularity. Yet there are undoubted practical difficulties in the actual circumstances in which we are placed. The ideal practice is undoubtedly to make half an hour's Mental Prayer before saying mass; but in many instances, especially in the case of the junior clergy, this is hardly possible. For they frequently have to say mass either very early or very late, or sometimes one, sometimes the other; or to go out to say mass at a convent or other centre some distance away, at a comparatively early hour.