In reading Finding God Through Meditation one can get to know the somewhat obscure St. Peter of Alcantara. He was a spiritual director of St. Teresa of Avila. He wrote Finding God Through Meditation in 1752. It was through St. Peter of Alcantara’s relationship that St. Teresa used St. Peter of Alcantara’s thoughts on contemplative prayer as the foundation for the fourth mansion in her book Interior Castle. This book, Finding God Through Meditation, was the text St. Teresa used to ensure her viewpoint on prayer was correct. Do you meditate?
Finding God Through Meditation Main Themes
St. Peter of Alcantara opens Finding God Through Meditation with a chapter on Perspective on Meditation and Devotion. In this opening chapter, he discusses two key ingredients. First, six things are needed for prayer and the preparation needed for prayer. He builds on these themes by reviewing how to meditate including reading, oblation, and petition in the first chapter of Finding God Through Meditation.
In Chapter Four, St. Peter of Alcantara writes of nine means to acquire devotion: completion of the exercise, custody of the heart, custody of the senses, solitude, reading of spiritual books, continual memory of God, perseverance, corporal austerities, and works of mercy.
In the same chapter, St. Peter of Alcantara lists the nine impediments to devotion: venial sins, remorse of conscience, the anxiety of heart, cares of the mind, a multitude of affairs, delights, and pleasures of the senses, inordinate eating and drinking, curiosity of senses and understanding, and intermission of exercises.
Daniel Burke’s Translation
Daniel Burke has provided readers the opportunity to know St. Peter of Alcantara by presenting this little-known text to us. This book will give the reader novel approaches to prayer, influenced by St. Teresa of Avila. If St. Peter of Alcantara’s thoughts on prayer were enough to influence, St. Teresa of Avila, a Doctor of the Church, then this book is valuable.
It might be propitious to know more about St. Peter of Alcantara. He was born in Alcántara, Spain in 1499 and died on October 18, 1562. His father, Peter Garavita, was the governor of the place, and his mother was of the noble family of Sanabia. After a course in grammar and philosophy in Alcantrara, he was sent to the University of Salamanca. He was 14 years old. These places are in Portugal.
Returning home, St. Peter of Alcantara became a Franciscan Priest in the convent of the Stricter Observance at Manxaretes, in 1515. At the age of twenty-two, he was sent to found a new community of the Stricter Observance in Badajoz, Brazil. He was ordained priest in 1524.
In the Chapter of Plasencia in 1540, St. Peter of Alcantara wrote the Constitutions of the Stricter Observants. However, his severe ideas met with opposition so he quit his position and retired with John of Avila into the mountains of Arabida, Portugal, where he joined Father Martin a Santa Maria in his life of eremitical solitude. Soon, however, other friars came to join him, and several little communities were established.
In 1560 communities were established in the Province of Arabida. He returned to Spain in 1553 spent two more years in solitude, and then journeyed barefoot to Rome, and obtained permission of Julius III, the Pope at the time, to found some poor convents in Spain. Convents were established at Pedrosa, Plasencia, and elsewhere; in 1556 they were made a commissariat, with Peter as superior, and in 1561, a province under the title of St. Joseph.
In 1562 he met St. Teresa of Avila. In St. Teresa, Peter saw a soul chosen by God for great work, and her success in the reform of Carmel was because of his counsel, encouragement, and defense. Perhaps the most remarkable of Peter’s graces were his gift of contemplation and the virtue of penance. Hardly less remarkable was his love of God, which was at times so ardent as to cause him, as it did St. Philip Neri, sensible pain, and frequently rapt him into ecstasy. He died in 1622 and his feast is October 19.
Conclusion
In Finding God Through Meditation readers looking for a way to enhance their prayer life will find it. It is the case that this little known saint produced on of the most interesting and useful works we can read. It is helpful, many will find, to learn to pray and meditate better. No question doing so is good for you.
