ORATORY OF SAINT PHILIP NERI
After his ordination as a priest, Philip Neri gathered around himself, beginning in 1552, a circle of friends and admirers whom he guided along the path of perfection. Gradually, he gave this group a stable form of activity that took the name of “exercises of the Oratory,” derived from the place where they met and from their principal activity, namely vocal and mental prayer.
The exercises of the Oratory, which thus gave rise to the social nucleus that still endures alongside every religious family inspired by Philip, initially consisted (though subsequent adaptations and reductions have been made) in the reading of a devotional book (the Bible, the *Lauds* of Jacopone, the *Life of Colomba*, works by the Carthusian, etc.), upon which a short edifying talk was spontaneously built. This was the “discourse on the book,” repeated four times a day, interspersed with vernacular hymns (*V. MUSICAL ORATORY*). They also made pilgrimages to churches, especially to the seven principal basilicas (the “visit to the seven churches”), and visits to hospitals, where the brothers of the Oratory went daily to serve the sick or bring them gifts. The subject matter of their sermons became specialized in the disciplines that remain typical of the Philipine Oratory: ecclesiastical history, moral theology, and the spiritual life.
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ORATORY OF SAINT PHILIP NERI — PRAYER
Prayer is a conversation and dialogue with God. Since speech is the natural mode of communication for human beings, prayer is sometimes called a “conversation” with God (*“oratio est conversatio sermocinationeque cum Deo”*: St. Gregory of Nyssa, *De orat. dom.*, Orat. I: PG 44, 1125). St. Paul enumerates various kinds of prayer: petitions to God, praise, supplications, and thanksgiving (1 Tim. 2:1). Sacred Scripture ordinarily speaks of prayer as impetratory or petitionary (Ps. 4:2; 16:1; 38:13), which God hears (Matt. 7:7; Luke 11:5–13; John 16:24). St. John Damascene defines prayer as “a petition for what is fitting from God” (*De Fide*, loc. cit.; cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, *Summa Theologiae*, II-II, q. 83, a. 1).
Prayer is an act belonging to the virtue of religion, for it implicitly acknowledges all of God’s attributes, particularly His goodness and power, and the creature’s dependence upon Him. Prayer, especially petitionary prayer, is the common and ordinary means by which adults attain justification (*S. Schiffini, De Gratia*, n. 315); no other means is more readily available to all, whether just or sinners, faithful or unbelievers, for obtaining the graces necessary for salvation. Hence Leo XIII exhorted not only Catholics but also Protestants to pray for the unity of the Faith (*Acta Leonis XIII*, VI, p. 36 ff.). The supernatural dignity of a member of the Church redounds in a certain way to others, so that holier souls have greater efficacy in their prayers for the benefit of their neighbors (*Prümmer, Theologia moralis*, I, n. 340). For prayers to be efficacious, they require the aid of grace and must proceed from faith and theological hope (Rom. 10:14; Jas. 1:6). The Holy Spirit assists souls in prayer, especially in cases where particular graces are necessary for the fulfillment of God’s hidden designs in the governance of souls and the world (*R. Cornely, In Rom.* 8:26).
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### II. MEDITATIVE AND CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER
Mental prayer, which can be methodical and discursive (*V. MEDITATION*) or contemplative (*V. CONTEMPLATION*), has a broader scope than vocal prayer alone. To it belong affective prayer—simple, recollected, a mere gaze, quiet, and union—which, by its nature, is affective in every form. Before prayer, the soul should prepare itself by thinking of God, with whom it is about to speak; hence a sense of recollection in the Lord’s presence and fervor are necessary, that is, humility and dedication, so that the heart and all the faculties may be united in seeking God who is present and in doing what He inspires.
Since it is essential to prayer to abide with God, prayer should begin with the stripping away of all other thoughts in order to seek Him alone. Moreover, the soul must, in prayer, seek above all God’s will so as to adhere to it with all its affection; indeed, it should come to feel within itself God’s will entirely and to relish II. God is wont to draw the created will in such a way that the soul clings to Him. In the total desire to unite itself to God, to abandon itself in Him, and to savor His will, the soul easily passes to elevation in God (*B. de Canfield, La Règle de perfection*, II, 1, pp. 199–200). Hence spiritual masters advise that prayer pass into affections. When the soul has already attained a constant practice of prayer, it should dwell chiefly in acts directed toward God, that is, expressions of faith, praise, adoration, wonder, gratitude, hope, contrition, and above all, love. Even St. Ignatius recommends that one should not be in haste to move forward in prayer but should remain where devotion is found, “for it is not the abundance of knowledge that satisfies the soul, but the inward tasting of things” (*Exercitia spiritualia*, annotation 2).
This kind of prayer, in which affections predominate, has been called affective prayer. In it, the work of the mind diminishes, though it is not entirely suppressed. It does not exclude discursive action, but the intuition of truth largely replaces II. Affective prayer has particular advantages. The difficulty of practicing the virtues, in fact, arises more from a lack of