Practice Meditation and Examination of Conscience

You must not fancy that the moral life has no need of sustenance; a soul, just as much as a body, can be ill, strong, or anemic. Unless it is to waste away, it must have its daily food, and instead of prayer - that incomparable source of life - two things must be practiced: meditation and examination of conscience. Every soul of any depth recognizes that these things are indispensable, and they were practiced by Marcus Aurelius (1) and Maine de Biran (2), just as much as by St. Francis de Sales and the lowliest Christian.

Meditation is the withdrawal of oneself into the very depths of one's being, to that point where, as theologians tell us, amid the silence of outward things, we find God; where you will find the source of all good, strength, and beauty (and this is God), where you will steep yourself in the thought of what is eternal in preparation for the strife of this world; and where you will understand, as your ideal becomes daily more clearly defined, both your own weakness and all that you can do here below in the cause of righteousness. A very definite subject must be taken for meditation, which otherwise is apt to become vague and dreamy, and, in that case, the remedy would be worse than the evil. Meditation should end in a practical resolution that can be applied at once; and it should be made every day, all the more when one is disinclined for it. It is in time of sickness that one most needs a physician.

Examination of conscience is also indispensable every evening; it ought to be sharp and clear, neither vague nor scrupulous. It does not take long to question oneself as to the use of one's time and the discharge of various duties, when these duties are well classified, and a systematic distribution has been made of one's time. This is a fundamental duty tending to restore and strengthen the soul day by day.

- Elisabeth Leseur, The Secret Diary of Elisabeth Leseur: the Woman's Whose Goodness Changed her Husband from Atheist to Priest, Sophia Institute Press, 2002

(1) Marcus Aurelius (121-180), Roman Emperor.
(2) Maine de Biran (1766-1824), French philosopher

(Elisabeth addressed this to a friend who was an unbeliever)