SadhanaOriental Meditation and Christian Prayer
Prayer with fantasy
[16] Contemplating on a scene in the Bible led by St. Ignatius: 2 (Nativity)
【Preparatory Prayer】
The Preparatory Prayer is to ask grace of God our Lord that all my intentions, actions and operations may be directed purely to the service and praise of His Divine Majesty.
【First Prelude】
The first prelude is the narrative and it will be here how Our Lady went forth from Nazareth, about nine months with child, as can be piously meditated, seated on an ass, and accompanied by Joseph and a maid, taking an ox, to go to Bethlehem to pay the tribute which Caesar imposed on all those lands.
【Second Prelude】
The second, a composition, seeing the place. It will be here to see with the sight of the imagination the road from Nazareth to Bethlehem; considering the length and breadth, and whether such road is level or through valleys or over hills; likewise looking at the place or cave of the Nativity, how large, how small, how low , how high, and how it was prepared.
【Third Prelude】
The third, to ask for what I want: It will be to ask for interior knowledge of the Lord, Who for me has become man, that I may more love and follow Him.
【First Point】
The first point is to see the persons; that is, to see Our Lady and Joseph and the maid, and, after His Birth, the Child Jesus, I making myself a poor creature and a wretch of an unworthy slave, looking at them and serving them in their needs, with all possible respect and reverence, as if I found myself in order to draw some profit.
【Second Point】
The second, to look, mark and contemplate what they are saying, and, reflecting on myself, to draw some profit.
【Third Point】
The third, to look and consider what they are doing, as going a journey and laboring, that the Lord may be born in the greatest poverty; and as a termination of so many labors---of hunger, of thirst, of heat and of cold, of injuries and affronts--- that He may die on the Cross; and all this for me: then reflecting, to draw some spiritual profit.
【Colloquy】
I will finish with a Colloquy as in the preceding Contemplation, and with as Our Father.
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※ For the fifth contemplation on the Nativity, St. Ignatius assigns the method to use our five senses as in the fifth contemplation on incarnation. (Description of this method of contemplation using five senses has been omitted in this page, as the typical method is described in section [15].)