Prayer is the offering in spirit that has done away
with the sacrifices of old. What good do I receive from the multiplicity of your
sacrifices? asks God. I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams, and I do not
want the fat of lambs and the blood of bulls and goats. Who has asked for these
from your hands?
What God has asked for we learn from the Gospel. The
hour will come, he says, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit
and in truth. God is a spirit, and so he looks for worshipers who are like
himself.
We are true worshipers and true priests. We pray in
spirit, and so offer in spirit the sacrifice of prayer. Prayer is an offering
that belongs to God and is acceptable to him: it is the offering he has asked
for, the offering he planned as his own.
We must dedicate this offering with our whole heart,
we must fatten it on faith, tend it by truth, keep it unblemished through
innocence and clean through chastity, and crown it with love. We must escort it
to the altar of God in a procession of good works to the sound of psalms and
hymns. Then it will gain for us all that we ask of God.
Since God asks for prayer offered in spirit and in
truth, how can he deny anything to this kind of prayer? How great is the
evidence of its power, as we read and hear and believe.
Of old, prayer was able to rescue from fire and
beast and hunger, even before it received its perfection from Christ. How much
greater then is the power of Christian prayer. No longer does prayer bring an
angel of comfort to the heart of the fiery furnace, or close up the mouths of
lions, or transport to the hungry food from the fields. No longer does it remove
all sense of pain by the grace it wins for others. But it gives the armor of
patience to those who suffer, who feel pain, who are distressed. It strengthens
the power of grace, so that faith may know what it is gaining from the Lord, and
understand what it is suffering for the name of God.
In the past prayer was able to bring down
punishment, rout armies, withhold blessing of rain. Now, however, the prayer of
the just turns aside the whole anger of God, keeps vigil for it enemies, pleads
for persecutors. Is it any wonder that it can call down water from heaven when
it could obtain fire from heaven as well? Prayer is the one thing that can
conquer God. But Christ has willed that it should work no evil, and has given it
all power over good.
Its only art is to call back the souls of the dead
from the very journey into death, to give strength to the weak, to heal the
sick, to exorcise the possessed, to open prison cells, to free the innocent from
their chains. Prayer cleanses from sin, drives away temptations, stamps out
persecutions, comforts the fainthearted gives new strength to the courageous,
brings travelers safely home, clams the waves, confounds robbers, feeds the
poor, overrules the rich, lifts up the fallen, supports those who a falling,
sustains those who stand firm.
All the angels pray. Every creature prays. Cattle
and wild beasts pray and bend the knee. As they come from their barns and caves
they look up to heaven and call out, lifting up their spirit in their own
fashion. The birds too rise and lift themselves up to heaven: they open out
their wings, instead of hands, in the form of a cross, and give voice to what
seems to be a prayer.
What more need be said on the duty of prayer? Even
the Lord himself prayed. To him be honor and power for ever and ever. Amen.
