Sermons (Massillon)/Sermon 13
SERMON XIII.
ON PRAYER.
"Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David." — Matt. xv. 22.
Such is the lamentation of a soul touched with its wretchedness, and which addresses itself to the sovereign Physician, in whose compassion alone it hopes to find relief. This was formerly the prayer of a woman of Canaan, who wished to obtain from the Son of David the recovery of her daughter. Persuaded of his power, and expecting every thing from his usual goodness to the unfortunate, she knew no surer way of rendering him propitious, than the cry of her affliction, and the simple tale of her misfortune. And this is the model which the church now proposes to us, in order to animate and to instruct us how to pray; that is to say, in order to render more pleasing, and more familiar to us, this most essential duty of Christian piety.
For, my brethren, to pray is the condition of man; it is the first duty of man; it is the sole resource of man; it is the whole consolation of man; and, to speak in the language of the Holy Spirit, it is the whole man.
Yes, if the entire world, in the midst of which we live, be but one continued temptation; if all the situations in which we may be, and all the objects which environ us, seem united with our corruption, for the purpose of either weakening or seducing us; if riches corrupt, and poverty exasperate; if prosperity exalt, and affliction depress; if business prey upon, and ease render effeminate; if the sciences inflate, and ignorance lead us into error; if mutual intercourse trivially engage us too much, and solitude leave us too much to ourselves; if pleasure seduce, and pious works excite our pride; if health arouse the passions, and sickness nourish either lukewar nines s or murmurings: in a word, if, since the fall of nature, every thing in, or around us, be a fresh danger to be dreaded; in a situation so deplorable, what hope of salvation, O, my God! could there be still remaining to man, if, from the bottom of his wretchedness, he had it not in his power to make his lamentations to be continually mounting toward the throne of thy mercy, in order to prevail that thou thyself may come to his aid; that thou may interfere to put a check upon his passions, to clear up his errors, to sustain his weakness, to lessen his temptations, to abridge his hours of trials, and to save him from his backslidings?
The Christian is therefore a man of prayer; his origin, his situation, his nature, his wants, his place of abode, all inform him that prayer is necessary. The church herself, in which he is incorporated through the grace of regeneration, a stranger here below, is always plaintive and full of lamentation; she recognizes her children only through their sighs, which they direct toward their country; and the Christian who does not pray, cuts himself off from the assembly of the holy, and is worse than an unbeliever.
How comes it then, my brethren, that a duty not only so essential, but even so consoling for man, is at present so much neglected? How comes it that it is considered either as a gloomy and tiresome duty, or as appropriated solely for retired souls; insomuch, that our instructions upon prayer scarcely interest those who listen to us, who seem as if persuaded that they are more adapted to the cloister than to the court?
Whence comes this abuse, and this universal neglect in the world of prayer? From two pretexts, which I now mean to overthrow. First, they do not pray, because they know not, say they, how to pray; and, consequently, that it is lost time. Secondly, they do not pray, because they complain that they find nothing in prayer but wanderings of the mind, which render it both insipid and disagreeable. First pretext, drawn from their ignorance of the manner in which they ought to pray. Second pretext, founded on the disgusts and difficulties of prayer. You must be taught, therefore, how to pray, since you know it not. And, secondly, the habit of prayer must be rendered easy to you, since you find it so troublesome and difficult.
Part I. — " The commandments which I command you," said formerly the Lord to his people, " are neither above your strength nor the reach of your mind; they are not hidden from you, nor far off, that you should say, who shall go up for us to heaven and bring them unto us, that we may hear them and do them? Nor are they beyond the sea, that you should say, who shall go over the sea for us and bring them unto us, that we may hear them and do them? But the word is very nigh unto you, in your mouth, and in your heart, that you may do it."
Now, what the Lord said in general of all the precepts of the law, that we have no occasion to seek beyond ourselves for the knowledge of them, but that they may be all accomplished in our heart and in our mouth, may more particularly be said of the precept of prayer, which is, as if the first and the most essential of all.
Nevertheless, what they commonly oppose in the world against this duty is, that, when they come to prayer, they know not what to say to God, and that praying is a secret of which they have never as yet been able to comprehend any thing. I say, then, that the source of this pretext springs from three iniquitous dispositions: the first is, that they are mistaken in the idea which they form of prayer; the second is, that they are not sufficiently sensible of their own wretchedness and wants; and the third is, that they do not love their God.
First. I say that they are mistaken in the idea which they form of prayer. In effect, prayer is not an exertion of the mind, an arrangement of ideas, a profound knowledge of the mysteries and counsels of God; it is a simple emotion of the heart; it is a lamentation of the soul, deeply affected at the sight of its own wretchedness; it is a keen and inward feeling of our wants and of our weakness, and a humble confidence which it lays before its Lord, in order to obtain relief and deliverance from them. Prayer supposes, in the soul which prays, neither great lights, uncommon knowledge, nor a mind more cultivated and exalted than that of the rest of men; it supposes only more faith, more contrition, and a warmer desire of deliverance from its temptations and from its wretchedness. Prayer is neither a secret nor a science which we learn from men; nor is it an art, or private method, upon which it is necessary to consult skilful teachers, in order to be master of its rules and precepts. The methods and the maxims thereupon, pretended to be laid down to us in our days, are either singular ways which are not to be followed, or the vain speculations of an idle mind, or a fanaticism which may stop at nothing, and which, far from edifying the church, hath merited her censures, and hath furnished to the impious matter of derision against her, and to the world fresh pretexts of contempt for, and disgusts at, prayer. Prayer is a duty upon which we are all born instructed: the rules of this divine science are written solely in our hearts; and the Spirit of God is the sole master to teach it.
A holy and innocent soul, who is penetrated with the greatness of God, struck with the terror of his judgments, touched with his infinite mercies, who only knows to humble himself before him, to acknowledge, in the simplicity of his heart, his goodness and wonders, to adore the orders of his providence upon him, to accept before him of the crosses and afflictions imposed upon him by the wisdom of his councils; who knows no prayer more sublime than to be sensible before God of all the corruption of his heart; to groan over his own hardness of heart, and opposition to all good; to intreat of him, with fervent faith, to change him, to destroy in him the man of sin, which, in spite of his firmest resolves, continually forces him to make so many false steps in the ways of God: a soul of this description is a thousand times more instructed in the knowledge of prayer than all the teachers themselves, and maysay, with the prophet, " I have more understanding than all my teachers." He speaks to his God as a friend to a friend; he is sorry for having offended him; he upbraids himself for not having, as yet, sufficient force to renounce all to please him; he takes no pride in the sublimity of his thoughts; he leaves his heart to speak, and gives way to all its tenderness before the only object of his love. Even when his mind wanders, his heart watches and speaks for him: his very disgusts become a prayer, through the feelings which are then excited in his heart: he is tenderly affected, he sighs, he is displeased with, and a burden to, himself: he feels the weight of his bonds, he exerts himself as if to break and throw them off; he a thousand times renews his protestations of fidelity; he blushes and is ashamed at always promising, and yet being continually faithless: such is the whole secret and the whole science of prayer. And what is there in all this beyond the reach of every believing soul?
Who had instructed the poor woman of Canaan in prayer? A stranger, and a daughter of Tyre and Sidon, who was unacquainted with the wonders of the law and the oracles of the prophets; who had not yet heard from the mouth of the Saviour the words of eternal life; who was still under the shadows of ignorance and of death: she prays, however; her love, her confidence, the desire of being granted, teach her to pray; her heart being touched, constitutes the whole merit and the whole sublimity of her prayer.
And surely, if, in order to pray, it were requisite to rise to those sublime states of prayer to which God exalteth some holy souls; if it were necessary to be wrapped in ecstasy, and transported even up to heaven, like Paul, there to hear those ineffable secrets which God exposeth not to man, and which it is not permitted, even to man himself, to reveal; or, like Moses upon the holy mountain, to be placed upon a cloud of glory, and, face to face, to see God; that is to say, if it were necessary to have attained to that degree of intimate union with the Lord, in which the soul, as if already freed from its body, springs up even into the bosom of its God; contemplates at leisure his infinite perfections; forgets, as I may say, its members which are still upon the earth; is no longer disturbed, nor even diverted by the phantoms of the senses; is fixed, and as if absorbed in the contemplation of the wonders and the grandeur of God; and already participating in his eternity, could count a whole age passed in that blessed state, as only a short and rapid moment; if, I say, it were necessary, in order to pray, to be favoured with these rare and excellent gifts of the Holy Spirit, you might tell us, like those new believers, of whom St. Paul makes mention, that you have not yet received them, and that you know not what is even that Spirit which communicates them.
But prayer is not a special gift set apart for privileged souls alone; it is a common duty imposed upon every believer; it is not solely a virtue of perfection, and reserved for certain purer and more holy souls; it is, like charity, an indispensable virtue, requisite to the perfect as to the imperfect, within the capacity of the illiterate equally as of the learned, commanded to the simple as to the most enlightened: it is the virtue of all men; it is the science of every believer; it is the perfection of every creature. Whoever has a heart, and is capable of loving the Author of his being, — whoever has a reason capable of knowing the nothingness of the creature, and the greatness of God, must know how to adore, to return him thanks, and to have recourse to him, to appease him when offended, to call upon him when turned away, to thank him when favourable, to humble himself when he strikes, to lay his wants before him, or to entreat his countenance and protection.
Thus, when the disciples ask of Jesus Christ to teach them to pray, he doth not unfold to them the height, the sublimity, the depth of the mysteries of God; he solely informs them, that, in order to pray, it is necessary to consider God as a tender, bountiful, and careful father; to address themselves to him with a respectful familiarity, and with a confidence blended with fear and love; to speak to him the language of our weakness and of our wretchedness; to borrow no expressions but from our heart; to make no attempt of rising to him, but rather to draw him nearer to us: to lay our wants before him, and to implore his aid; to wish that all men bless and worship him; that his reign be established in all hearts; that his will be done, as in heaven, so on earth; that sinners return to the paths of righteousness; that believers attain to the knowledge of the truth; that he forgive us our sins; that he preserve us from temptation; that he assist our weakness; that he deliver us from our miseries. All is simple, but all is grand in this divine prayer; it recalls man to himself, and, in order to adopt it as a model, nothing more is required than to feel our wants, and to wish deliverance from them.
And behold, why I have said that the second iniquitous disposition, from whence the pretext, founded upon not knowing how to pray proceeded, is, that they do not sufficiently feel the infinite wants of their soul: for, I ask you, my brethren, is it necessary to teach a sick person to entreat relief? Is a man pressed with hunger difficulted how to solicit food? Is an unfortunate person, beaten with the tempest, and on the point of perishing, at a loss how to implore assistance? Alas! doth the urgent necessity alone not amply furnish expressions? In the sole sense of our evils, do we not find that animated eloquence, those persuasive emotions, those pressing remonstrances which solicit their cure? Has a suffering heart occasion for any master to teach it to complain? In it every thing speaks, every thing expresses its affliction, every thing announces its sufferings, and every thing solicits relief: even its silence is eloquent.
You yourself, who complain that you know not what method to take in praying, in your temporal afflictions, from the instant that a dangerous malady threatens your life, that an unlooked-for event endangers your property and fortune, that an approaching death is on the point of snatching from you a person either dear or necessary, then you raise your hands to heaven; then you send up your lamentations and prayers; you address yourself to the God who strikes and who relieves; you then know how to pray; you have no need of going beyond your own heart for lessons and rules to lay your afflictions before him, nor do you consult able teachers in order to know what is necessary to say to him; you have occasion for nothing but your grief, your evils alone have found out the method of instructing you.
Ah! my brethren, if we felt the wants of our soul as we feel those of our body, — if our eternal salvation interested us as much as a fortune of dirt, or a weak and perishable health, we would soon be skilful in the divine art of prayer; we would not complain that we had nothing to say in the presence of a God of whom we have so much to ask; the mind would be little difficulted in finding wherewith to entertain him; our evils alone would speak; in spite of ourselves, our heart would burst forth in holy effusions, like that of Samuel's mother before the ark of the Lord; we would no longer be master of our sorrows and tears; and the most certain mark of our want of faith, and that we know ourselves not, is, that of not knowing what to say to the Lord in the space of a short prayer.
And after all, is it possible that, in the miserable condition of this human life, surrounded as we are with so many dangers; made up ourselves of so many weaknesses; on the point, every moment, of being led astray by the objects of vanity, corrupted by the illusions of the senses, and dragged away by the force of example; a continual prey to the tyranny of our inclinations, to the dominion of our flesh, to the inconstancy of our heart, to the inequalities of our reason, to the caprices of our imagination, to the eternal variations of our temper; depressed by loss of favour, elated by prosperity, enervated by abundance, soured by poverty, led away by custom, shaken by accidents, flattered with praise, irritated by contempt; continually wavering between our passions and our duties, between ourselves and the law of God; is it possible, I say, that, in a situation so deplorable, we can be difficulted what to ask of the Lord, or what to say to him, when we appear in his presence? O my God! why then is man not less miserable? Or why is he not better acquainted with his wants?
Ah! if you told us, my dear hearer, that you know not where to begin in prayer; that your wants are so infinite, your miseries and your passions so multiplied, that, were you to pretend to expose them all to the Lord, you would never have done: if you said to us, that the more you search into your heart, the more your wounds unfold, the more corruption and disorders do you discover in yourself, and that, despairing of being able to relate to the Lord the endless detail of your weaknesses, you present your heart wholly to him, you leave your evils to speak for you, you ground your whole art of prayer on your confusion, your humiliation, and your silence; and that, in consequence of having too much to say to him, you say nothing; if you spoke in this manner, you would speak the language of faith, and that of a penitent king, who, contemplating his repeated relapses, and no longer daring to speak to his God in prayer, said, " Lord, I am troubled, I am bowed down greatly; I go mourning all the day long; for mine iniquities are gone over my head; as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me. My heart panteth, my strength faileth me; for I will declare mine iniquity, I will be sorry for my sin. Forsake me not, O Lord: O my God! be not far from me. Make haste to help me, O Lord, my salvation." Such is the silence of compunction which forms before God the true prayer.
But to complain that you have no longer any thing to say, when you wish to pray: alas! my dear hearer, when you present yourself before God, do your past crimes hold out nothing for you to dread from his judgments, or to ask from his mercy? What! your whole life has perhaps been only a sink of debaucheries; you have perverted every thing, grace, your talents, your reason, your wealth, your dignities, all creatures; you have passed the best part of your days in the neglect of your God, and in all the delusions of the world and of the passions; you have vilified your heart by iniquitous attachments, defiled your body, disordered your imagination, weakened your lights, and even extinguished every happy disposition which nature had placed in your soul; and the recollection of all this furnishes you with nothing in the presence of God? And it inspires you with no idea of the method you ought to adopt, in having recourse to him, in order to obtain his forgiveness of such accumulated crimes? and you have nothing to say to a God whom you have so long offended? O man! thy salvation, then, must either be without resource, or thou must have other means of accomplishing it than those of the divine clemency and mercy.
But, my dear hearer, I go farther. If you lead a Christian life; if, returned from the world and from pleasures, you are at last entered into the ways of salvation, you are still more unjust in complaining that you find nothing to say to the Lord in your prayers. What! the singular grace of having opened your eyes, of undeceiving you with regard to the world, and withdrawing you from the bottom of the abyss; this blessing, so rare, and denied to so many sinners, doth it give rise to no grateful feeling in your heart, when at his feet? Can this recollection leave you cold and insensible? Is nothing tender awakened by the presence of your benefactor, you who pride yourself upon having never forgotten a a benefit, and who so pompously display the feeling and the excess of your gratitude toward the creatures?
Besides, if you feel those endless tendencies, which, in spite of your change of life, still rise up within you against the law of God; that difficulty which you still have in doing well; that unfortunate inclination which you still find within you toward evil; those desires of a more perfect virtue, which always turn out vain; those resolutions to which you are always faithless; those opportunities in which you always find yourself the same; those duties which always meet the same repugnance in your heart; in a word, if you feel that inexhaustible fund of weakness and of corruption which remains with you after your conversion, and which alarms so much your virtue, you will not only have ample matter to address the Lord in prayer, but your whole life will be one continual prayer. All the dangers which shall threaten your weakness, all the accidents which shall shake your faith, all the objects which shall open afresh the former wounds of your heart, all the inward emotions which shall prove that the man of sin lives always within you, will lead you to look upwards to Him from whom alone you expect deliverance from them. As the apostle said, every place will be to you a place of prayer; every thing will direct your attention to God, because every thing will furnish you with Christian reflections upon yourself.
Besides, my dear hearer, even granting that your own necessities should not be sufficient to fill the void of your prayer, employ a portion of it with the evils of the church; with the dissensions of the pastors; with that spirit of schism and revolt which seems to be forming in the sanctuary; with the relaxation of believers; with the depravity of manners; with the sad progress of unbelief, and the diminution of faith among men. Lament over the scandals of which you are a continual witness; complain to the Lord, with the prophet, that all have forsaken him; that every one seeks his own interest; that even the salt of the earth hath become tasteless, and that piety is become a traffic. Entreat of the Lord the consummation of his elect, and the fulfilment of his designs upon the church; religious princes, faithful pastors, humble and enlightened teachers, knowing and disinterested guides; peace to the churches; the extinction of error, and the return of all who have gone astray.
What more shall I add? Entreat the conversion of your relations, friends, enemies, protectors, and masters; the conversion of those souls to whom you have been a stumbling-block; of those whom you have formerly estranged from piety through your derisions and censures; of those who perhaps owe their irreligion and free-thinking solely to the impiety of your past discourses; of those of whom your examples or solicitations have formerly either perverted the virtue or seduced the weakness. Is it possible that these great objects, at once so sad and so interesting, cannot furnish a moment's attention to your mind, or some feeling to your heart? Every thing which surrounds you teaches you to pray; every object, every accident which you see around you, provides you with fresh opportunities of raising yourself to God; the world, retirement, the court, the righteous, the sinful, the public and domestic occurrences, the misfortunes of some, and the prosperity of others; every thing, in a word, which meets your eyes, supplies you with the subject of lamentation, of prayer, of thanksgiving. Every thing instructs your faith; every thing excites your zeal; all grieves your piety, and calls forth your gratitude; and amid so many subjects of prayer, you cannot supply a single instant of prayer! Surrounded with so many opportunities of raising yourself to God, you have nothing to say to him when you come to appear in his presence? Ah! my brethren, how far removed must God be from a heart which finds it such a punishment to hold converse with him, and how little must that master and friend be loved, to whom they never wish to speak!
And behold the last and the principal cause of our incapacity in prayer. They know not how to pray and to speak to their God, because they do not love him. When the heart loves, it soon finds out how to communicate its feelings, and to affect the object of its love; it soon knows what it ought to say: alas! it cannot express all that it feels. Let us establish regularity once more in our hearts, my brethren; let us substitute God in place of the world; then shall our heart be no longer a stranger before God. It is the irregularity of our affections which is the soul cause of our incapacity in prayer; eternal riches can never be fervently asked when they are not loved; truths can never be well meditated upon when they are not relished; and little can be said to a God who is hardly known: favours which are not desired, and freedom from passions which are not hated, can never be very urgently solicited; in a word, prayer is the language of love; and we know not how ,to pray, because we know not how to love.
But, as you shall say, doth an inclination for prayer depend upon us? And how is it possible to pray, with disgusts and wanderings of the mind, which are not to be conquered, and which render it insupportable? Second pretext, drawn from the disgusts and the difficulties of prayer.
Part II. — One of the greatest excesses of sin is undoubtedly that backwardness, and, I may say, that natural dislike which we have to prayer. Man, innocent, would have founded his whole delight in holding converse with God. All creatures would have been as an open book, where he would have incessantly meditated upon his works and his wonders; the impressions of the senses, under the command of reason, would never have been able to turn him aside, in spite of himself, from the delight and the familiarity of his presence; his whole life would have been one continued contemplation of the truth, and his whole happiness in his innocence would have been founded on his continual communications with the Lord, and the certainty that he would never forsake him.
Man must therefore be highly corrupted, and sin must have made strange alterations in us, to turn into a punishment what ought to be our happiness. It is, however, only too true, that we almost all bear in our nature this backwardness and this dislike to prayer: and upon these is founded the most universal pretext which is opposed to the discharge of this duty, so essential to Christian piety. Even persons, to whom the habit of prayer ought to be rendered more pleasing and more familiar, by the practice of virtue, continually complain of the disgusts and of the constant wanderings which they experience in this holy exercise; insomuch, that, looking upon it either as a wearisome duty, or as a lost trouble, they abridge its length, and think themselves happily quit of a yoke and of a slavery, when this moment of weariness and restraint is over.
Now, I say, that nothing is more unrighteous than to estrange ourselves from prayer, on account of the disgusts and wanderings of the mind, which render it painful and disagreeable to us; for these disgusts and wanderings originate, — first, from our lukewarmness, and our infidelities, — or, secondly, in our being little accustomed to prayer, — or, thirdly, in the wisdom even of God, who tries us, and who wishes to purify our heart, by withholding for a time the sensible consolations of prayer.
Yes, my brethren, the first and the most common source of the disgusts and the dryness of our prayers, is the lukewarmness and the infidelity of our life. — It is, in effect, an injustice to pretend that we can bring to prayer a serene and tranquil mind; a cool imagination, free from all the vain phantoms by which it is agitated; a heart affected with, and disposed to relish the presence of its God, — while our whole life, though otherwise virtuous in the eyes of man, shall be one continual dissipation; while we shall continue to live among objects the most calculated to move the imagination, and to make those lively impressions on us which are never done away; in a word, while we shall preserve a thousand iniquitous attachments in our heart, which, though not absolutely criminal in our eyes, yet trouble, divide, and occupy us, and which weaken in us, or even totally deprive us of any relish for God and the things of heaven.
Alas! my brethren, if the most retired and the most holy souls; if the most recluse penitents, purified by long retreat, and by a life altogether devoted to Heaven, still found, in the sole remembrance of their past manners, disagreeable images, which force their way even into their solitude, to disturb the comfort and the tranquillity of their prayers; do we expect that in a life, regular I confess, but full of agitation, of occasions by which we are led away, of objects which unsettle us, of temptations which disquiet, of pleasures which enervate, of fears and hopes which agitate us, we shall find ourselves in prayer, all of a sudden new men, purified from all those images which sully our mind, freed from all those attachments which come to divide and perhaps corrupt our heart, in tranquillity from all those agitations which continually make such violent and such dangerous impressions upon our soul; and that, forgetting for a moment the entire world, and all those vain objects which we have so lately quitted, and which we still bear in our remembrance and in our heart, we shall, all of a sudden, find ourselves raised, before God, to the meditation of heavenly things, penetrated with love for eternal riches, filled with compunction for innumerable infidelities which we still love, and with a tranquillity of mind and of heart, which the profoundest retirement, and the most rigorous seclusion from the world frequently do not bestow? Ah! my brethren, how unjust we are, and into what terrible reproaches against ourselves shall the continual complaints made by us against the duties of piety one day be turned!
And, to go farther into this truth, and to enter into a detail which renders it more evident to you, you complain, in the first place, that your mind, incapable of a moment's attention in prayer, wanders from it, and flies off in spite of yourself. But how can it be otherwise; or how can you find it attentive and collected, if every thing you do takes off its attention and unsettles it; if, in the detail of conduct, you never recollect yourself; if you never accustom yourself to that mental reflection, to that life of faith, which, even amid the dissipations of the world, find ample sources of holy reflection? To have a collected mind in prayer, you must bring it along with you; it is necessary that even your intercourse with sinners, when obliged to live among them, the sight of their passions, of their anxieties, fears, hopes, joys, chagrins, and wretchedness, supply your faith with reflections, and turn your views toward God who alone bestows collectedness of mind and the tranquillity of prayer. Then, even on quitting the world and those worldly conversations, where duty alone shall have engaged your presence, you will find no difficulty in going to recollect yourself before God, and in forgetting at his feet those vain agitations which you have so lately witnessed. On the contrary, the designs of faith which you shall there have preserved j the blindness of the worldly, which you shall there have inwardly deplored, — will cause you to find new comforts at the feet of Jesus Christ; you will there, with consolation, recreate yourself from the weariness of dissipation and of worldly nothings; you will lament, with increased satisfaction, over the folly of men who so madly pursue after a vapour, a a chimerical happiness, which eludes their grasp, and which it is impossible ever to attain, for the world in which they seek it cannot bestow it; you will there more warmly thank the Lord for having, with so much goodness, and notwithstanding your crimes, enlightened and separated you from that multitude which must perish; you will there see, as in a new light, the happiness of those souls who serve him, and whose eyes, being opened upon vanity, no longer live but for the truth.
Secondly. You complain that your heart, insensible in prayer, feels nothing fervent for its God, but, on the contrary, a disgust which renders it insupportable. But how is it possible that your heart, wholly engrossed with the things of the earth, filled with iniquitous attachments, inclination for the world, love of yourself, schemes for exalting your station, and desires perhaps of pleasing; how is it possible, I say, that your heart, compounded with so many earthly affections, should still have any feeling for the things of heaven? It is wholly filled with the creatures; where then should God find his place in it? We cannot love both God and the world. Thus, when the Israelites had passed the Jordan, and had eaten of the fruits of the earth, " the manna ceased on the morrow after they had eaten of the old corn of the land, neither had the children of Israel manna any more;" as if to show, that they could not enjoy at the same time both the heavenly nourishment and that of the earth.
Love of the world, said St. Augustine, like a dangerous fever, sheds a universal bitterness through the heart, which renders the invisible and eternal riches insipid and disgusting to us. Thus, you never come to prayer but with an insurmountable disgust. Ah! it is a proof that your heart is diseased; that a secret fever, and perhaps unknown to yourself, causes it to languish, saps and disgusts it; that it is engrossed by a foreign love. Mount to the source of your disgusts toward God, and every thing connected with him, and see if they shall not be found in the iniquitous attachments of your heart; see if you are not still a slave to yourself, to the vain cares of dress, to frivolous friendships, to dangerous animosities, to secret envies, to desires of rank, to every thing around you. These are the source of the evil: apply the remedy to it; take something every day upon yourself; labour seriously toward purifying your heart; you will then taste the comforts and the consolations of prayer; then the world no longer engrossing your affections, you will find your God more worthy of being loved: we soon ardently love the only object of our love.
And, after all, render glory here to the truth. Is it not true, that the days in which you have been more guarded upon yourself, — the days in which you have made some sacrifices, to the Lord, of your inclinations, of your indolence, of your temper, of your aversions; is it not true, that, in these days, you have addressed your prayers to the Lord with more peace, more consolation, and more delight? We encounter, with double pleasure, the eyes of a master to whom we have lately given some striking proof of fidelity; on the contrary, we are in pain before him when we feel that he has cause of a thousand just reproaches against us: we are then anxious and under restraint; we endeavour to hide ourselves from his view, like the first sinner: we no longer address him with that overflowing heart, and that confidence, which a conscience pure and void of offence inspires; and the moments when we are under the necessity of supporting his divine presence are anxiously counted.
Thus, when Jesus Christ commands us to pray, he begins with ordering us to watch. He thereby means us to understand that vigilance is the only preparation to prayer; that to love to pray, it is necessary to watch; and that fondness for, and consolation in prayer, are granted only to the recollection and to the sacrifices of vigilance. I know, that, if you do not pray, you can never watch over yourself and live holily; but I likewise know, that, if you exert not that vigilance which causes to live holily, you can never pray with comfort and with consolation. Prayer, it is true, obtains for us the grace of vigilance; but it is yet more true, that vigilance alone can draw down upon us the gift and the usage of the prayer.
And, from thence, it is easy to conclude, that a life of the world, even granting it to be the most innocent, that is to say, a life of pleasure, continual gaming, dissipation, and theatrical amusement, which you call so innocent, when attended with no other harm than that of disqualifying you for prayer; when this worldly life, which you so strongly justify, should contain nothing more criminal than that of disgusting you at prayer, of drying up your heart, of unsettling your imagination, of weakening your faith, and of filling your mind with anxiety and trouble; when we should judge of the security of this state merely from what you continually tell us, that you are incapable of arranging yourself for prayer, and that, on your part, it is always attended with an insupportable disgust and weariness; I say, that, for these reasons alone, the most innocent worldly life is a life of sin and reprobation; a life for which there is no salvation: for salvation is promised solely to prayer; salvation is not attainable but through the aid of prayer; salvation is granted only to perseverance in prayer; consequently, every life which places an invincible obstacle in the way of prayer, can have no pretensions to salvation. Now, you are fully sensible yourselves, my brethren, that a life of dissipation, of gaming, of pleasure, and of public places, puts an essential obstacle in the way of prayer; that it places in your heart, in your imagination, in your senses, an invincible disgust at prayer, an unsettledness incompatible with the spirit of prayer: you continually complain of this; you even make use of it as a pretext not to pray; and from thence be assured that there is no salvation for the worldly life, even the most innocent; for, wherever prayer is impossible, salvation must likewise be so. First reason of the disgusts and of the wanderings of our prayers — the lukewarmness and the infidelity of our life.
The second is our little usage of prayer. We pray with disgust, because we seldom pray. For, first, it is the practice alone of prayer which will gradually calm your mind, which will insensibly banish from it the images of the world and of vanity, which will disperse all those clouds which produce all the disgusts and the wanderings of your prayers. Secondly, you must ask for a long time before you can obtain; you must press, solicit, and even importune; the sweets and the consolations of prayer are the fruit and the reward of prayer itself. Thirdly, there must be familiarity in order to find pleasure in it. If you seldom pray, the Lord will be a strange and unknown God to you, as I may say, before whom you will feel yourself embarrassed, and under a kind of restraint; with whom you will never experience those overflowings of heart, that sweet confidence, that holy freedom, which familiarity alone bestows, and which constitute the whole pleasure of the divine intercourse. God requires to be known, in order to be loved. The world loses by being examined; the surface, and the first glance of it are alone smiling. Search deeper, and it is no longer but emptiness, vanity, anxious care, agitation, and misery. But the Lord must be tasted, says the prophet, in order to feel how good he is. The more you know, the more you love him: the more you unite yourself to him, the more do you feel that there is no true happiness on the earth but that of knowing and of loving him.
It is the use, therefore, of prayer, which alone can render prayer pleasing. Thus we see that the generality of persons who complain of the disgusts and of the wanderings of their prayers, seldom pray; think this important duty fulfilled when they have bestowed upon the Lord a few hasty moments of thoughtlessness and restraint; forsake it on the first symptom of disgust; make no exertion to reduce and familiarize their mind to it; and far from considering prayer as being rendered only more necessary to them, by their invincible repugnance to it, they regard that very repugnance as a legal excuse, which dispenses them altogether from it.
But how find time in the world, you will say, to make so long and so frequent a use of prayer? You, my dear hearer, not find time to pray? But wherefore is time given to you, but to entreat of God to forget your crimes, to look upon you with eyes of compassion, and to place you one day among the number of his holy? You have not time to pray? But you have not time, then, to be a Christian; for, a man who prays not, is a man who has no God, no worship, and no hope. You have not time to pray? But prayer is the beginning of all good; and if you do not pray, you have not yet performed a single work for eternal life. Ah! my brethren, is time for ever wanting to solicit the favours of the earth, to importune the master, to besiege those who are in place, to bestow upon pleasures, or upon idleness? What useless moments! What languid and tiresome days, through the mere gloom which ever accompanies idleness! What time lost in vain ceremonials, in idle conversations, in boundless gaming, in fruitless subjections, in grasping at chimeras which move farther and farther from us! Great God! and time is wanted to ask heaven of thee, to appease thy wrath, and to supplicate thine eternal mercies! How humbly, O my God, must salvation be estimated, when time is wanted to entreat of thy mercy to save us! And how much are we to be deplored, to find so many moments for the world, and to be unable to find a single one for eternity! Second cause of the disgusts and of the wanderings of your prayers — the little use of prayer itself.
It is true, my brethren, that this reason is not so general but that souls, the most faithful to prayer, are often seen to experience all those disgusts and those wanderings of which I speak! but, I say, that these disgusts proceed from the wisdom of God, who means to purify them, and who leads them by that path, only in order to fulfil his eternal designs of mercy upon them. Last reason— that consequently, far from being repulsed by what they find gloomy and disagreeable in prayer, they ought to persevere in it with even more fidelity than if the Lord had shed upon them the most abundant and the most sensible consolations.
First. Because you ought to consider these disgusts as the just punishment of your past infidelities. Is it not reasonable that God make you expiate the criminal voluptuousness of your worldly life by the disgusts and the sorrows of piety? Weakness of temperament does not perhaps permit you to punish, by corporeal sufferings, the licentiousness of your past manners: is it not just that God supply that, by the punishment, and the inward afflictions of the mind? Would you pretend to pass in an instant from the pleasures of the world to those of grace; from the viands of Egypt to the milk and honey of the land of promise, without the Lord having first made you to undergo the barrenness and the fatigues of the desert; and, in a word, that he should not chastise the delights, if I may venture to say so, of guilt, but by those of virtue?
Secondly. You have so long refused yourself to God, in spite of the most lively inspirations of his grace, which recalled you to the truth and to the light; you have so long suffered him to knock at the gate of your heart before you have opened it to him; you have disputed, struggled against, wavered, deferred so much, before you gave yourself to him; is it not just that he leave you to solicit for some time before he give himself to you with all the consolations of his grace? The delays and the tarryings of the Lord are the just punishment of your own.
But, even admitting these reasons to be less weighty, how do you know if the Lord thereby mean not to render this exilement and this separation in which we live from him, more hateful to you, and to increase the fervency of your longings for that immortal country where truth, seen in open day, will always appear lovely, because we shall see it as it is? How do you know if he thereby mean not to inspire you with new compunction for your past crimes, by making you sensible, at every moment, of the contrariety and disgust which they have left in your heart to the truth and to righteousness? Lastly, how do you know, if the Lord mean not, by these disgusts, to perfect the purification of what may as yet be too human in your piety; — if he mean not to establish your virtue upon that truth which is always the same, and not upon inclination and fancy, which incessantly change; upon rules which are eternal, and not upon consolations which are transitory; upon faith which never fails to sacrifice the visible for the invisible riches, and not upon feeling, which leaves to the world almost the same empire that grace hath over your heart? A piety wholly of fancy goes a short way, if not sustained and confirmed by the truth. It is dangerous to let our fidelity depend upon the feeling dispositions of a heart which is never an instant the same, and upon which every object makes new impressions. The duties which only please when they console, do not please long; and that virtue which is solely founded on fancy can never sustain itself, because it rests only upon ourselves.
For, after all, if you seek only the Lord in your prayers, provided that the way by which he leads you conduct to him, it ought to matter little to you whether it be by that of disgusts or of consolations, for, being the surest, it ought always to appear preferable to all others. If you pray only to attract more aids from heaven in relief of your wants, or in support of your weakness, faith teaching you that prayer, even when accompanied with those disgusts and those drynesses, obtains the same favours, produces the same effects, and is equally acceptable to God as that in which sensible consolations are found. What do I say? — that it may become even more agreeable to the Lord, through your acceptance of the difficulties which you there encounter; faith teaching you this, you ought to be equally faithful to prayer as if it held out the most sensible attractions, otherwise it would not be God whom you sought, but yourselves; it would not be eternal riches, but vain and fleeting consolations; it would not be the remedies of faith, but the supports of your self-love.
Thus, be whom you may who now listen to me, imitate the woman of Canaan; be faithful to prayer, and, in the fulfilment of this duty, you will find all the rest sustained and rendered easy. If a sinner, pray: it was through prayer alone that the publican and the sinful woman of the gospel obtained feelings of compunction and the grace of a thorough penitence; and prayer is the only source and the only path of righteousness. If righteous, still pray: perseverance in faith and in piety is promised only to prayer; and by that it was that Job, that David, that Tobias, persevered to the end. If you live amid sinners, and your duty does not permit you to withdraw yourself from the sight of their irregularities and examples, pray: the greater the dangers, the more necessary does prayer become; and the three children in the flames, and Jonah in the belly of a monster, found safety only through prayer. If the engagements of your birth, or of your station, attach you to the court of kings, pray: Esther, in the court of Ahasuerus, Daniel in that of Darius, the prophets in the palaces of the kings of Israel, were solely indebted to prayer for their life and salvation. If you live in retirement, pray: solitude itself becomes a rock, if a continual intercourse with God does not defend us against ourselves; and Judith, in the secrecy of her house, and the widow Anna in the temple, and the Anthonies in the desert, found the fruit and the security of their retreat in prayer alone. If established in the church for the instruction of the people, pray: all the power and all the success of your ministry must depend upon your prayers; and the apostles converted the universe solely because they had appropriated nothing to themselves but prayer and the preaching of the gospel. Lastly, be whom you may, I again repeat it, in prosperity or in indigence, in joy or in affliction, in trouble or in peace, in fervency or in despondency, in lust or in the ways of righteousness, advanced in virtue, or still in the first steps of penitence, pray. Prayer is the safety of all stations, the consolation of all sorrows, the duty of all conditions, the soul of piety, the support of faith, the grand foundation of religion, and all religion itself. O my God! shed, then, upon us that spirit of grace and of prayer which was to be the distinguishing mark of thy church, and the portion of a new people; and purify our hearts and our lips, that we may be enabled to offer up to thee pure homages, fervent sighs, and prayers worthy of the eternal riches which thou hast so often promised to those who shall have well entreated them.