are necessary, the remote and the proximate.

The remote preparation demands the removal of all obstacles which impede
prayer, and the greatest of all prayers, the Church's official prayer.
The chief or capital obstacles which impede or prevent a pious
recitation of the Breviary are: sin, the passions, the absorbing
thoughts of creatures and the ignorance of the Divine Office. And the
means to remove these obstacles are to purify the conscience, science,
to mortify the passions, to guard the sense and to have an intelligent
knowledge of the duty and requirements of a proper fulfilment of the
daily task of the saying of the Canonical Hours.

The first means is to purify the conscience from sin, for sin hinders
prayer. But what effect has sin on the recitation of the Office? The
Office is a prayer, an elevation of the soul to God, and as all writers
on ascetics teach, sin is a chain that binds us to earth; it is, says
St. Francis, as birdlime which impedes the soul in its flight upwards.
Prayer is a conversation with God, but a soul loving sin cannot converse
with God; "_Peccatores Deus non audit_" (St. John, ix. 31). Prayer is an
intimate union with God, but a soul resting in sin can have no intimate
union with God; there can be no intimate union between light and
darkness, between sanctity and sin, between good and evil; in a word,
between Christ and Belial. _Quae participatio, quae societas lucis ad
tenebras? Quae conventio Christi el Belial?_

The second means of procuring fervent prayer is the mortification of the
passions. It is not enough to secure fervour in prayer that our souls
should be free from sin; we must struggle to master our passions. This
point is important--for a soul upset by its passions, anger, pride,
etc., cannot with fervour recite the Hours, for it cannot converse with