De arte praedicatoria

This is the teaching on prayer: All things whatsoever you ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive.¹ Pray for one another that you may be saved; for the persevering prayer of a righteous man avails much.² The Lord is far from the wicked, and he will hear the prayers of the righteous.³ Before prayer prepare your soul, and be not as a man who tempts God.⁴ God will hear the prayer of the one who has been wronged.⁵ Son, in your weakness do not despise yourself, but pray to God, and he will heal you. Rise from your bed, turn away from sin, and direct your hands, be occupied with prayers and readings night and day, and when sleep has fallen from your eyes, let your mind then awaken to prayer.

Just as it is not fitting for a soldier to go out to war without weapons, so it is not fitting for any Christian to proceed without prayer. Hence Jerome says: "Let prayer arm the one going out from lodging." The more heavily we are pressed by the tumult of carnal thoughts, the more fervently we ought to persist in prayer. It is better to pray with silence of heart than with words alone, without attention of mind; for the usefulness of singing psalms consoles the sadness of the heart.

The desire to pray toward God ought to be so great that one does not despair of obtaining the result through prayers. We pray in vain if we have no confidence of hope. He who turns away from God's precepts will not deserve what he asks for in prayer. Caesarius said: We ought to devote ourselves to prayer and reading in such a way that at times we can also do some work with our hands. Just as poisonous animals are driven away by stronger herbs or by remedies, so pure prayer drives away unclean thoughts. Do not, O man, disfigure your prayer with any circumstance; ask for eternal things, not temporal ones. If you ask for earthly things, your prayer lacks matter; if it does not come from charity, it lacks form: ask, then, devoutly, so that your prayer is shaped; persistently, so that your intention is rooted; and let the things that pertain to eternal salvation cling to a stable foundation. Do not ask for monstrous things, lest your prayer be turned into sin for you, as was the prayer of Judas. Do not ask out of rancor of mind, like the sons of Zebedee, who asked Christ that fire come down from heaven to lay waste the Samaritans.⁶ For they did not ask with an eye to justice, but out of love of vengeance.

If you pray, exclude the tumult of thoughts from your mind, close the door of your mind, enter the chamber of your heart. When you pray to God, preserve the sweetness of your ointment, lest dying flies spoil the sweetness of the holy incense;⁷ that is, take care lest depraved thoughts insinuate themselves into your prayer, thoughts that would destroy the merit of your prayer. If you offer the sacrifice of prayer to God, drive away the birds from the sacrifice as Abraham did,⁸ lest they lie in wait for the offerings and taint them; for it must be feared that unclean thoughts corrupt the sweetness of the prayer offered. For there are many who have God on their lips and the devil in their mind; who praise God with their voice, but blaspheme in their mind, and while their tongue is engaged in hymns, their soul is on the dinner plates; and what they confess with their mouth, they deny in their soul. Such people, so far as it lies in them, mock God, blaspheme the divine majesty, and while they pray that the sins of the tongue be forgiven, they do not hesitate to keep them in their mind. Indeed, there are some who pollute their mouth in praying, and infect their soul.

Concerning these Seneca says: Now how great is the madness of men! They raise the most shameful prayers to God, which they would fall silent about if anyone put an ear near them: what men do not want other men to know, they tell to God. "Live with men as though God saw you; speak with God as though men heard you." O man, if you wish to be heard, ask worthily for worthy things, and so you will ask God for what it belongs to God to give. There is a certain kind of prayer that is dangerous, by which we ask for evil things, such was the prayer of Judas the traitor, because he asked for the betrayal of the Savior. Another is profitable in a base sense, by which temporal things are sought, such was the request of the sons of Zebedee, by which they asked that one sit at the right hand and the other at the left hand of God in his kingdom, which they believed he would rule temporally.⁹ Another is fruitless, by which someone obstinately asks for eternal salvation, of which it is said: Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven.¹⁰ Another is fruitful, in which nothing of what is fitting is left out, of which it is said: Whatsoever you shall ask the Father in my name, it shall be done for you.¹¹ Here one should understand rather the divine power behind the name, than merely the name of the divine power. He truly asks in the name of Jesus who asks with a salutary intention, and for eternal salvation. This alone is the prayer that pleads before the judge, that argues the case before the heavenly Prince. Of this it is said in the Song of Love: Who is this who comes up through the desert like a little column of smoke from the perfumes of myrrh and frankincense and all the powders of the perfumer?¹² For this is what truly ascends, which penetrates paradise and rises up to the throne of God.

This is elegantly called a little rod, and straight, because just as a rod is directed straight upward, so fruitful prayer is not bent toward earthly things, but is directed unbendingly toward heavenly things. It is elegantly compared to smoke, because just as smoke, arising from fire, tends upward, so fruitful prayer, arising from the furnace of charity, ascends upward. It is also elegantly said to ascend through the desert, because the mind through which such prayer is poured out is separated from all the noise of depraved thoughts. This prayer is from the perfumes of myrrh and frankincense. Frankincense brings a sweet odor, myrrh bitterness. By frankincense, then, is signified devotion of mind; by myrrh, the bitterness of repentance. Therefore the ointment of prayer ought to be composed of the bitterness of repentance for sins, and the fragrance of inward devotion. For whoever desires to pray fruitfully must, being penitent for his sins, exhale the devotion of his mind in praying. And of all the powders of the perfumer. The perfumer is Christ, who illumines his own with the various perfumes of the virtues, and, as it were, intoxicates them with perfumed nectar. The whole powder of this perfumer is the manifold virtue from which we ought to compose the ointment of prayer.