In the past
prayer was able to bring down punishment, rout armies, withhold the blessing of
rain. Now, however, the prayer of the just turns aside the whole anger of God,
keeps vigil for its 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 travellers safely home, calms the
waves, confounds robbers, feeds the poor, overrules the rich, lifts up the
fallen, supports those who are 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 out 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 honour
and power for ever and ever. Amen.
Reflection
–
Well, this is just all so beautiful that I hardly know what to say about it.
‘Prayer is the one thing that can conquer God’—that is a magnificent turn of
phrase right there.
This was in the office of readings last
week, and it struck me so powerfully, not only because it is so very beautiful,
but because it resonated so deeply with what I was teaching last week, namely,
a course on liturgy and worship. I love especially Tertullian’s bit about the
beasts of the field lifting their voices to heaven and the birds opening their
wings like hands opened in prayer, in the form of the cross.
All creation is made for prayer, that is,
for a radical openness to God. Creation is not a closed shop, a mute and
isolated lump of matter. Creation is, in its true created nature, its deepest
essence of being, an open space for God, a type of being conditioned utterly by
its relationship to the Other who made it.
Prayer is the soul of creation, and the
soul of humanity. We are made in a state of total dependence and receptivity to
God, and when our life is not bound up in the action of prayer, in the lived
out, fleshed-out, reality of prayer, our life is wrong at the most fundamental
level it can be wrong at. If we are not praying, we have gone astray at the
most serious and damaging point of our humanity.
But the last words of Tertullian are even
more penetrating into this mystery. The Lord Himself prayed. He just leaves it
there, but consider that. Jesus, who we believe to be God, prayed… to God. How
can that be? God prays to God? A theologian being very precise and technical
would say that this is the human nature of Christ, not the divine.
But pray is a personal act of the
subject, and there is only one person here, the divine person of the Son, the
Second Person of the Trinity. And that right there plunges us into the deepest
level of this prayer business. The Son ‘prays’ to the Father, from all
eternity. Not as we pray—God is God and we are not—but prayer nonetheless.
Dialogue, communion, love, totality of gift and totality of reception, from all
eternity.
So when I say that prayer is the radical
nature of created human reality, what I really am saying is that the most
radical nature of human reality is to enter the communion of the Trinity. We are
made, not simply to live some sort of ‘good human life’ (whatever on earth that
means), but rather to enter into the life of God. And we do this above all in
our prayer, through prayer, by prayer.
That is, we do it by crying out to God
continually. That which may seem like an act of weakness turns out to be our
greatest strength, of servility turns out to be our glorification, of
desperation turns out to be the one sure hope of our race, of futility and
uselessness turns out to be the most powerful and effective path in life.
In short: pray. Pray badly, pray well,
pray reluctantly, pray eagerly. It don’t matter. Pray, pray, pray—and in that
prayer, enter into the very life of God.
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