On Prayer 26–29

Do not let a brother who has entered your house go away without prayer (“You have seen your brother,” it says, “you have seen your Lord”), especially a stranger, lest he perhaps be an angel. Nor, when you yourself are received by the brothers, should you put earthly refreshments before heavenly ones; for your faith will be judged at once. Or how will you say, according to the precept, “Peace to this house,” unless you also exchange peace with those who are in the house?

Those more diligent in praying are accustomed to add in their prayers the Alleluia and psalms of this kind, to whose closing lines those present respond. And certainly every practice is excellent that serves to extol and honor God, bringing up a full prayer like a rich victim.

For this is the spiritual victim which has done away with the former sacrifices. “What to me,” he says, “is the multitude of your sacrifices? I am full of burnt offerings of rams, and I do not want the fat of lambs and the blood of bulls and goats. For who has required these from your hands?” What, then, God has required, the gospel teaches: “The hour will come,” he says, “when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For God is spirit,” and so he requires worshipers of this kind. We are the true worshipers and the true priests, who, praying in the spirit, offer in the spirit the sacrifice of prayer, a victim proper and acceptable to God, which he has required, which he has provided for himself. This, devoted from the whole heart, fed by faith, tended by truth, whole in innocence, clean in chastity, crowned with love, we ought to lead to God's altar with a procession of good works amid psalms and hymns, and it will obtain everything for us from God.

For what will God deny to prayer that comes from spirit and truth, since he requires it? How great are the proofs of its efficacy that we read and hear and see! The old prayer, indeed, delivered from fire, from beasts, and from hunger, and yet it had not received its form from Christ. But how much more does Christian prayer accomplish! It does not station an angel of dew in the midst of the flames, nor shut the mouths of lions, nor carry the peasants' lunch to the hungry; it does not by a delegated grace avert all feeling of suffering; but it equips with endurance those who suffer and feel and grieve, it enlarges grace by strength, so that faith may know what it obtains from the Lord, understanding what it suffers for God's name. In the past, too, prayer inflicted plagues, routed the armies of enemies, withheld the benefits of rain. But now the prayer of righteousness turns away all the wrath of God, keeps watch for enemies, makes supplication for persecutors. Is it any wonder if it knows how to wrest the waters of heaven, when it could even obtain fire? Prayer alone conquers God; but Christ has willed that it work no evil. He has conferred on it all its power for good. So it knows nothing except to call back the souls of the dead from the very road of death, to restore the weak, to heal the sick, to cleanse the demon-possessed, to open the bars of prison, to loose the chains of the innocent. It likewise washes away sins, repels temptations, extinguishes persecutions, consoles the faint-hearted, delights the high-hearted, guides travelers, calms the waves, stuns robbers, feeds the poor, rules the rich, raises the fallen, holds up the falling, keeps those who stand. Prayer is the wall of faith, our arms and weapons against the enemy who watches us on every side. So let us never go out unarmed. By day let us remember the station, by night the vigil. Under the arms of prayer let us guard the standard of our commander; praying, let us await the angel's trumpet. All the angels pray too; every creature prays; cattle and wild beasts pray and bend their knees, and coming out of their stalls and dens look up to heaven, not with idle mouth, making their breath tremble in their own way. And the birds, too, rising in the morning, lift themselves toward heaven and spread out the cross of their wings instead of hands, and say something that seems to be prayer. What more, then, about the duty of prayer? Even the Lord himself prayed; to whom be honor and power for ever and ever.