Sacred images are good for people with poor imaginations or good imaginations. Sacred images can most certainly serve individual prayer, just as they serve liturgical prayer in our churches. Imaginative representations must be named on our list. A holy imagination enables us to really identify with scriptural scenes, as Teresa did. A playful but disciplined imagination is essential to the classical prayer tradition.
Interior images can serve prayer as effectively as exterior ones.
But images, like discursive reflections, must nourish affection. Images are means, and good ones when they feed the heart and the will. We would do well to allow images and feelings mature expression within us as we encounter them in the Scriptures and in other books and pious exercises that serve our prayer. Images can put us in touch with ourselves as few other things can. Biblical images have special power for this, and we need to trust our own spontaneous images triggered by the biblical images.