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 God, it cannot elevate itself to God, it can have no true union with God.  It cannot converse with God, for God will not converse with an unmortified soul for three reasons.  First, He will not speak if there be no one to listen, for the Holy Ghost tells us “Where there is no hearing, pour not out words” (Eccli. xxxii. 6).  God wishes a soul in converse with Him to be calm and still, for God is not in the earthquake (3 Kings, xix. ii.).  Again, even if God speaks to an unmortified soul, it cannot hear Him as the passions fix its attention on worldly matters.  And even when such a soul tries to listen and to understand, the passions surging and warring drown all sound and sense of holy things.  For, “the animal man perceiveth not these things that are of the spirit of God, for it is foolishness to him and he cannot understand, because it is spiritually examined” (I.  Cor. ii. 14).  The human soul cannot truly unite itself to God if the passions are not conquered, because by their very nature they are opposed to God and hence inspire estrangement from, and disgust for, holy things.

Thirdly, the senses must be guarded.  Our five senses can impede the recitation of the Office because they present to our souls images of the things which occupy them, and they can draw our will towards the pleasures which correspond with these objects.  It is necessary for the worthy, attentive and devout saying of the Office that each sense be guarded.  The sense of sight should be guarded from gazing at objects at hand, persons, books, landscape, etc.  The sense of hearing should be guarded in flying from the company of evil speakers, calumniators, detractors, those who speak of worldly affairs or who give evil counsel.  It is necessary, too, to guard the tongue from evil speech.  “I have set a guard to my mouth, when the sinner stood against me” (Psalm 38, 2); and it is well to guard against too frequent or too long conversations, which fill the soul with thoughts disturbing to a prayerful disposition.  The sense of touch should likewise be guarded, for St. Thomas says that the sense of touch is the maintenance of the other senses (1 P. q. 76, a. 75).  And when the foundations of a house commence to fall asunder, the walls, the frame and the roof totter and fall.  So it is with the senses; when the sense of touch is disturbed the other senses quickly complete the ruin.