On one occasion I asked him whether there would be more spiritual loss in omitting the exercise of mental prayer or in omitting that of recollection and aspirations. He answered that the omission of mental prayer might be repaired during the day or night by frequent withdrawal of the mind into God and by aspirations to Him, but that mental prayer unaccompanied by aspirations was, in his estimation, like a bird with clipped wings. He went on to say that: "by recollection we retire into God, and draw God into ourselves, as it is written: _I opened my mouth, and panted, because I longed for Thy commandments_,[1] by which is meant the mouth of the heart to which God always graciously inclines His ear. In the Canticle the bride says that her Beloved led her into His _cellar of wine, he set in order charity in me_.[2] Or, as another version has it, _He enrolled me under the banner of His love_. Just as wine is stored up in vaults or cellars, and as soldiers gather under their standards or banners; so all the faculties of our soul gather together around the goodness and love of God by short spiritual retreats, made from time to time throughout the day. But when are they made, and in what place? At any moment, and in any place, and there is no meal, or company, or employment, or occupation of any sort which can hinder them, just as they on their part neither hinder nor interfere with anything that has to be done. On the contrary, this is a salt which seasons every kind of food, or rather a sugar which never spoils any sauce. It consists only in inward glances from ourselves and from God, from ourselves into God, and from God into ourselves, without pictures or speech, or any outward aid; and the simpler this recollection is the better it is. As regards aspirations, they also are short but swift dartings of the soul into God, and can be made by a simple mental glance cast towards Him. _Cast thy care_, or thoughts, _upon the Lord_,[3] says David. The more vigorously an arrow is shot from the bow the more swift is its flight. The more vehement and loving is an aspiration, the more truly is it a spiritual lightning-flash. These transports or aspirations, of which we have so many formulas, are the better the shorter they are. One of St. Bruno seems to me excellent on account of its brevity: _O goodness of God_; that also of St. Francis, _My God and my all_! and that of St. Augustine, _Oh! to love, to go forward, to die to self, to reach God_!"