Our prayer will become easier if, together with the determined determination not to allow voluntary distractions in it, we try to deal with the Most Holy Humanity of Jesus, inexhaustible source of love, which facilitates so much the fulfillment of the divine will.
The Saint herself tells us of the decisive importance that a small event had in her life, which left an indelible mark on her soul: "Entering one day in the oratory, she writes, I saw an image that had been brought there to be kept (...). It was of a very wounded Christ and so devout that, when I looked at it, I was so disturbed to see such an image, because it represented well what happened for us. I felt so much how badly I had been thankful for those wounds, that my heart seemed to break and I threw myself on Him with a great outpouring of tears, begging Him to strengthen me at once so as not to offend Him". It was not sentimentality that made her cry, but love for Christ, who loves us so much and suffered so much for us in proof of love. And it is so natural to seek in an image, in a portrait, the face that one loves! Therefore, he will add further on: "Woe to those who through their own fault lose this good! It seems that they do not love the Lord, because if they loved him, they would be happy to see his portrait, as here it is even happy to see the portrait of the one who is loved well".
On many occasions it will also help us to use our imagination to represent with clear images of Jesus being born in Bethlehem, walking in the company of Mary and Joseph, learning to work... the anguish of Mary's Heart in the flight to Egypt... her pain on Calvary. At other times we will approach the group of the intimate ones, to whom Jesus explains, alone, a parable; we will accompany Him in those long walks from city to city, from village to village...; we will enter with Him in the house of His friends of Bethany and we will contemplate the affection with which those brothers receive Him, and we will learn to treat Him better in the Tabernacle. We cannot have a blurred and distant figure of Jesus. He is the Friend who is always close and attentive.
In mental prayer we will meet the living Christ, who is waiting for us. "Teresa reacted against the books that proposed contemplation as a vague absorption in the divinity (cf. Life, 22, 1) or as "thinking of nothing" (cf. Interior Castle, 4, 3, 6), seeing in it a danger of withdrawing into oneself, of turning away from Jesus, from whom "all good things come to us" (cf. Life, 22, 4). Hence his cry: "to turn away from Christ... I cannot bear it" (Life, 22, 1). This cry is also valid in our days against some prayer techniques that are not inspired by the Gospel and that practically tend to dispense with Christ, in favor of a mental void that has no meaning in Christianity.
Many difficulties disappear when we place ourselves in his presence, taking good care of the preparatory prayer we are accustomed to pray: I firmly believe, Lord, that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me, I adore you with profound reverence? And if we are in his presence, like those who listened to him in Nazareth or Bethany, we are already praying. We look at him, he looks at us...; we formulate a petition..., we make our own what perhaps we are reading, stopping in a paragraph, or drawing a purpose for our ordinary life: to take better care of the family, to smile even if we are tired or with difficulties, to work with more intensity and presence of God, to talk to a friend to go to confession.... It will happen to us as it did to St. Teresa, and to all those who have made true prayer: "I always came out of prayer consoled and with new strength", she confesses to us.