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
worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. God is a spirit,
and so he looks for worshippers who are like himself.
We are true
worshippers 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 beasts 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 a 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 armour 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.
Tertullian,
Treatise on Prayer
Reflection
– There are some real
gems in the Office of Readings this time of year, and I thought I would spend
the week sharing some of them that have struck me. This 2nd century
treatise on prayer came up last week, and is especially beautiful.
Prayer as replacing the sacrificial
animals is a rich image, and Tertullian has a good time (it seems to me)
playing with it. The animals were fattened on grain; prayer is fattened on
faith. The animals were housed and tended and kept safe by the shepherds;
prayer is shepherded by truth. The
animals were kept unblemished and clean; with prayer this happens through the
fight against sin and impurity of heart; the animals were borne to the altar by
their handlers; the ‘handlers’ of prayer are the psalms and hymns and inspired
texts of the Word of God.
This is not just playful literary
imagery, though. This is really exactly how it works. Especially, it seems to
me, the whole connection of psalmody and scripture with the bearing of our
prayers to the altar of God. Often we do feel a bit lost, a bit aimless in our
praying. Many people struggle to know how to pray or flounder in prayer. The
place of Scripture in the prayer life of the Christian cannot be overstated.
We are a people of the Word. Christ is
the Word of God, and the whole of our prayer, if it is Christian prayer, is a
gathering of all our human words into a union the One Divine Word, a gathering
that itself is a work of the Spirit in us.
We are re-worded in prayer, all of our
human knowledge and affections, longings and understandings, brought into,
purified, corrected, strengthened, healed, restored, into the knowledge and
love of the Trinity, made accessible to us in Jesus Christ.
But it is the specific use of Scripture,
the Gospels and psalms in a particular way, to incarnate that ‘re-wording’ in
concrete specific terms. The Gospels, since they are Christ’s own words and
deeds. The psalms, because they were Christ’s own prayers in his life on earth.
And so, while prayer has manifold forms and expressions, we can never get away
from the ancient practice of lectio
divina, of the reading of the Word of God in the context of deep personal
prayer and meditation.
We are re-worded by this, and this
re-wording is vital in all of our lives. All our words, so many words, so much
verbiage (ahem, speaking for myself…), and all of it needs to be brought into The
Word, submitted, corrected, purified. Without this, it’s all ‘vanity of
vanities and a chasing after wind,’ as Ecclesiastes put it just the other day.
But with this re-wording, this Christifying of our words and innermost being,
that ‘wind’ becomes the Breath of God and the Spirit of love and truth bearing
us into the heart of the Trinity. And that’s what prayer is really about, isn’t
it?
Fr. Denis, I do not know which is more exquisite. Tertullian's piece...or your reflection. All that our hearts do not know to verbalize is here. Thank you for every word that proceeds from your mystical keyboard which helps us to pray.
ReplyDeleteWow - thanks. And may God bless you in your prayer.
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