The Sermon on the Mount (Bossuet)/Day 44
Forty-fourth Day
Asking through Jesus Christ: The qualities of a perfect prayer. — John xvi. 23, 37.
WE must learn to ask through Jesus Christ; and to ask through Christ is to ask for what He commands; to ask for His glory; to introduce the Saviour’s name; to place our trust in His goodness and in the infinite merits of His Blood. Whatever we ask through our Saviour ought chiefly to concern our salvation: — anything else should be merely asked as an accessory. When we ask in that Name, to which the Father can refuse nothing, we are sure to obtain what we want, for our Lord has promised it; and to doubt this is to make Jesus Christ a liar. ' Amen, Amen, I say to you: if you ask the Father anything in my name, he will give it you.’
If, then, we do not get what we ask for, we may take for certain that we have prayed badly, according to what St James says: — ‘You ask, and receive not, because you ask amiss; that you may consume it on your concupiscences.'[1]
To ask amiss, is to ask without faith, as we learnt before from the same Apostle: — ' If any of you want wisdom, let him ask it. . . but in faith, nothing wavering': — without fear — believing firmly that what you ask will be granted, if you pray well and persevere in prayer.
Our Saviour will not give us anything we ask for which may hinder our salvation. Let us ask for our conversion: if we keep to that request, we shall obtain it.
And let souls who are in the Religious state remember this: — that, for them, the chief fruit of Christ’s teaching on prayer should be faithfulness to the hours consecrated to it. Even should they be inwardly distracted — supposing that they lament it, and would gladly not be so — if they remain faithful, humble, and submissive externally: — then the obedience rendered to God, to the Church, and to their Rule, by observing the prescribed genuflections, inclinations, or other outward forms of worship, preserves the real spirit of prayer. They are praying then by means of their state, their disposition, and their will: — and this especially if they humble themselves for their dryness and distractions. Ah, how pleasant is such prayer to God! How well it mortifies both body and soul! What graces it calls down, and what sins it expiates!
- ↑ James iv. 3.