St. Peter Alcantara was a spiritual advisor to one of Catholicisms greatest mystics and spritual doctors of the Church, St. Theresa of Avila. In his work A Golden Treatise on Mental Prayer, he describes how to practice mental prayer, or Christian meditation, and its benefits. Mental prayer, in the estimation of the spiritual doctors of the Catholic Church, is one of the most basic needs of the Christians progress in holiness. In addition to detailing the how and why of mental prayer, he also prepared a set of 14 meditations for those new to mental prayer to use on a daily basis. Doing so, he hoped, would train the novice in prayer in the ways of Christian meditation, and lead them closer to Christ.