Sermons from the Latins/Sermon 43
Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost.
The Necessity and Proper Method of Prayer.
"And immediately his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spoke right." — Mark v". 35
SYNOPSIS.
Ex. : I. Ceremonies of Baptism. II. Epistle of to-day. III. Effects of prayer.
I. Necessity as to justification : 1. Scripture. 2. Pray always. 3. Only thorough remedy.
II. Necessity as to perseverance: 1. Prosperity and adversity. 2. Thabor. 3. Natural remedy.
III. Parts : 1. Preparation and study. 2. Contemplation and thanksgiving. 3. Petition.
Per. : Prayer and its parts exemplified in incidents of the Gospel.
SERMON.
Brethren, in the administration of the Sacrament of Baptism, the Church employs those selfsame ceremonies which Christ originated in the cure of the blind and of the deaf and dumb. Moistening his fingers "with saliva the priest touches the infant's senses, saying meanwhile: "Be thou opened," to indicate that by the grace of Baptism God will open these eyes to His heavenly truths, and these ears to His holy admonitions, and that He will loosen this tongue to speak His praises. It was with this idea in mind that the Church assigned St. Paul's profession of faith to be the epistle of to-day. But, alas! the sacramental grace of Baptism is often thwarted, and the spiritual inertness of babyhood brought back by sin, so that the soul stands once more before God blind and deaf and dumb. It is evident from the text that the mute of to-day's Gospel had at one time enjoyed the use of speech, but that, having through accident or sickness lost his hearing, he had become partially, if not wholly, dumb. He is a perfect figure of a Christian soul in sin, and his miraculous cure is but the outward form of those innumerable miracles of grace, those conversions which God effects in response to prayer. "They brought to Him one that was deaf and dumb, and they besought Him that He would lay His hand upon him." To my mind, the Gospel message to-day is the necessity and the proper method of prayer; prayer for others and prayer for ourselves, that frequently turning aside with Jesus from the multitudes, our eyes may be opened to see, and our ears to hear, and our tongues loosed, to proclaim the wonderful works of God.
Brethren, though fasting and prayer go hand in hand, still of the two, prayer is the more important, for while fasting ceases on festivals, prayer becomes more insistent. And of the two forms of prayer, oral and mental, the latter is the higher, for by reason of our inconstancy, oral prayer is always in danger of degenerating into lip service, whereby men vainly seek to honor God while their hearts are far from Him. The brief, but fierce and noisy, thunderstorm is more destructive than productive, but the silent, steady, gentle downpour renews the face of the earth. Nothing is more insisted on in Scripture than the necessity of prayer: "Let nothing hinder you from praying always" is the constant cry of the Holy Spirit. "You that are mindful of the Lord," says Isaias, "hold not your peace, nor give Him silence." "Seven times a day I praised the Lord," says the man after God's own heart. Christ's frequent retreats to solitude, and His long vigils on the mountain-side could have had no other object than to emphasize this truth. "Watch and pray," He says, and by diverse parables He showed that we ought to pray always and not to faint, and St. Paul insists again and again that we should "continue in supplications and prayers night and day." A prayerful spirit, in fact, is an essential characteristic of Christianity, for, says the prophet: "By all the nations shall My house be called a house of prayer." Nor will it do to say that for the virtuous to work is to pray, and that thus they are ever fulfilling this precept. The parables of the troublesome widow and the importunate friend at the baker's door show that real prayer is meant. The true sense, therefore, is that we must recognize prayer as one of the greatest duties of life, consecrate to it every day some time with which lesser concerns should never be allowed to interfere, and resume it at all times whenever possible. Did the love-sick youth but give to God the love he wastes on a creature, would not his prayer be constant, would not his heart be ever where his treasure is? Could we but realize our beggarly destitution, our utter helplessness and dependence on God in all our temporal and spiritual needs, would it not come as natural to us to lift our hands and voices in prayer for our daily bread as it does to the unfledged to cry for the mother bird? In spiritual matters, beggars are rich, and the self-sufficient miserably poor, for unless we ask, we need not hope to receive. Why is it that so many practical Catholics make such little progress in the spiritual life, if not that they have failed to master, or neglect, the art of praying well? They remove their sins as they do their hair or beard, leaving the* roots for another growth. Fasting, alms and such are but external remedies for sin, but our soul's maladies are from within, and prayer alone can penetrate and cleanse the heart. Life, spiritual as well as physical, comes from the heart. A heart inflamed with love softens and glorifies the entire system as does the heat the iron, and the fuel of this fire is prayer. By prayer our nature is transfigured, becoming white and glittering as did Christ on Thabor. Take a lesson from the falcon. In the moulting season he seeks a warmer climate, and flaps his wings and the old feathers fall and the new begin to grow. So we, to put off the old man and put on the new, must seek the Sun of Justice, and basking in the rays of His love, lift our hands to Him in frequent, earnest prayer.
Brethren, prayer is necessary, not only in begetting, but in preserving sanctity. By the same medicine health is restored and prolonged. Worldly prosperity and adversity powerfully influence our perseverance in good by engendering either presumption or despair. But the prayerful man is that happy mortal whom the philosopher compares to a dice; fall as he may he always rests easily. So accustomed is he to dealing with the great things of God, that the little affairs of earth, be they good or bad, are to him matters of indifference. " He hath made the Most High his refuge, and no evil can come to him." Like God, he views our little world from afar, from a great height, and, appreciating the smallness of it, he passes imperturbable amid those ups and downs which sorely agitate the worldly. With St. Paul he " reckons that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come." For if St. Augustine, as he relates, was filled with disgust for all the pleasures of life by a brief conversation with his mother, Monica, how much more so he who habitually converses with God in prayer! The master sentiment of such a soul is well expressed in Peter's words on Thabor: "Lord, it is good for us to be here; let us make three tabernacles," that, viz., leaving the world we may abide with Thee forever. Prayer alone, I repeat, can effect this blessed result. For attachment to earthly things is but the innate love of the human heart gone astray, and such a heart is more easily led back by natural than by violent means. Simihia similibus curantur. Fasting, alms, and such like works of penance are bitter, violent remedies, but prayer is easy and natural, and so satisfies the cravings of the soul with heavenly consolations that it no longer yearns for worldly things. For the prayerful man abides in God, the all-good, and God in him. His soul, having chosen the better part of Mary, is rewarded with a foretaste of the joys of heaven. Prayer is his Jacob's ladder, which keeps him in constant communication with God. It is the very heart of his religion, to which churches, altars, priests, etc., are but accessories. In religious work, prayer is an absolutely essential instrument, for whosoever have done great things for God or humanity, or raised themselves to eminent sanctity — all were men of prayer. In a word, the man devoid of prayer is more helpless even than the Gospel mute, and by prayer alone can his faculties be restored to speak and act aright.
Brethren, to realize prayer's necessity were futile without an earnest effort to master the proper method of prayer. " You ask," says St. James, " and you receive not, because you ask amiss." Granted, therefore, that the mind and heart are essential factors in our devotions, know that every prayer should consist of five parts: preparation, study, thought, thanksgiving, and petition. On a proper preparation depends almost the entire fruit of that holy exercise wherein we speak to God and God speaks to us. Were you spokesman of a committee sent to petition the President on some important subject, what care would you not give to the manner of your address! And will we, entering God's presence on a matter of infinite concern to ourselves, be less solicitous? Will not our boorishness pique the Lord's patience, or our slow stammering put His mercy to sleep? " Before praying," says the Holy Spirit, " prepare thy soul, and be not as a man that tempteth God." When Satan dared Our Saviour to cast Himself from the Temple's pinnacle, Christ replied: " It is written, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord, thy God." So, too, to pray without preparation is presumption of God's mercy, for it is tantamount to asking God to send His angels to sustain us without effort on our part, or even against our will. As the violinist, before playing, tunes his instrument, so a soul must be prepared ere its petitions can prove pleasing to the Lord. But how prepared? In two ways: first, by removing sin from the soul by contrition or through the Sacrament of Penance. We thus put off the shoes from our feet, as Moses did, to stand on holy ground, and see our God ; we wash our raiment, as did the Israelites when going to meet their Lord. " And if," says Christ, " thou offer thy gift at the altar and there thou rememberest that thy brother hath anything against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go first to be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." "Be thou the first to declare thy iniquities," says Isaias, " that thou mayest be justified." It will not do to turn to God in prayer for pardon and blessings, while neglecting or forgetting the grievances others may have against us. " Thus shalt thou pray," says the Lord, " forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them their trespasses against us." " Forgive thy neighbor," He adds, " if he hath hurt thee, and then shall thy sins be forgiven thee when thou prayest." Secondly, we must enter God's majestic presence bowed in spirit, filled with the thought of His greatness, all intent on doing Him honor, and at the same time conscious of our own littleness; that in this mighty universe and amid the millions of angels and of men, past, present, and to come, we are indeed as a grain of dust or ashes. God hears the humble publican's prayer, but that of the proud Pharisee He rejects. The second part of prayer is study, that is, an effort of the imagination to bring before us vividly the person to whom our prayer is made. All prayers, even those directed to the holy souls, the blessed, the angels, or their Queen, should ultimately be addressed to God, for the answer, though it come through them, must come from Him. In this effort, the imagination is powerfully assisted by the study of Scripture, especially the Gospels. We thus become so conversant with the Saviour in every incident of His birth, life, Passion, death, and Resurrection, that in an instant by a simple act of our will we can easily place ourselves before Him as He appeared at that particular portion of His earthly career which most strongly appeals to us. This " composition of place," as St. Ignatius calls it, is the strongest known safeguard against distraction* in prayer. Prayer's third element is thought or reflection, and for this third part no set rules can be assigned, for it will vary according to the present bent of each. So rich is the personality of Our Saviour, that in His life we find a parallel for our every temptation, want, trial, and affliction, and by comparing our little crosses with the cruel weight of His we learn patience and resignation to God's will; and His ever-ready willingness to heal and comfort and save others, confirms our faith and reanimates our hope. But meditation, to be fruitful, must go deeper than the mind; the heart, too, must be waked to action. The mind should minister to the heart as does a nurse to a little child, collecting and preparing food for meditation, and masticating it herself before feeding it to her charge. But if the nurse not only masticate but swallow the food, her charge will starve and die. The will is, as it were, the customs officer at the city gate, but if instead of levying just toll he confiscate all merchandise, a famine in the city, in the heart, is sure to follow. To meditate with the mind alone as one might ponder a mathematical problem, would prove as barren of results as the labors of a huntsman whose dog should not only catch but devour the game, for the function of the mind is to discover and grasp the truth and lay it at the feet of its master, the heart. Nor can our heart's best emotions be elicited without much labor and great patience, for they are as green wood and must be set upon the fire of God's love long and closely ere sputtering resistance and clouds of smoke give place to clear flame. Yet prayer without emotion is labor as vain as that Our Lord described when He said: "And some seed fell upon a rock and as soon as it was sprung up it withered away because it had no moisture." The fourth part should be thanksgiving. Be our needs ever so great, be our prayer answered or not, we must never fail to return thanks to God, who knows our wants much better than we do ourselves. "The Lord hath given," says holy Job, "and the Lord hath taken away; blest be the name of the Lord." "We must," says St. Paul, "give thanks alway for all things." The fifth and last part of prayer is petition. Our appeal to God must include a request for light to know our real needs, temporal and spiritual. " Thou sayest," says St. John, " that thou art rich and are made wealthy and have need of nothing, and thou knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." Having tried to see our own and our living and dead neighbor's wants as God sees them, our prayer for help must be made; first, with implicit trust in God's power and willingness to relieve them. " Whatsoever you ask when you pray," says Christ, " believe that you shall receive and they shall come unto you." Secondly, with humility, for " God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble." Thirdly, with the perseverance of the widow seeking justice, of the friend wishing to purchase bread, of the woman of Chanaan, or of St. Paul, who thrice asked the Lord for the selfsame favor. Lastly, with fervor, for unless the incense be dropped on the fire it will not ascend to the Lord. The fiery chariot is the only vehicle to heaven. But if, when all is over, the particular object of our prayer be still denied us, let us finish with the words: " Thy will be done," confident of having been heard by Him who seeth in secret what things are really for our good, and who in secret shall reward us. The fact that He granted the devil's request to enter the swine and refused St. Paul's appeal that Satan should depart from him, is not a proof that Paul's prayer was unheard, for God knew that temptations borne and baffled by His grace would win for Paul a crown of glory.
Brethren, the necessity of prayer and its component parts are all exemplified in the Gospel of to-day. The man was deaf and dumb, but they, having studied Christ's miracles and meditated on His power and goodness, came and begged Him earnestly, confidently, perseveringly, to lay His hand upon him. And Jesus promptly answered them by healing the man's infirmities, so that they all cried out in a chorus of thanksgiving: " He hath done all things well; He hath made both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak."