souls. The weapons which prayer supplies are most powerful against our most implacable foes: " With the cries of our prayers," says St. Hilary, " we must fight against the devil and his armed hosts." [1]
From prayer, we also derive this important advantage, that, inclining as we do, to evil, by the innate corruption of our own hearts, and to the indulgence of sensual appetite, God permits us to bring him, in a special manner, present to our minds; that, whilst we address him in prayer, and endeavour to merit his gifts and graces, we may be inspired with a love of innocence, and, by effacing our sins, be purified from every stain of guilt.
Finally, as St. Jerome observes, prayer disarms the anger of God. Hence, these words addressed to Moses, " Let me alone," [2] when Moses sought to interpose his prayer for the protection of a guilty people. Nothing is so efficacious in appeasing God, when his wrath is kindled; nothing so effectually averts his fury, when provoked; nothing so powerfully arrests his arm, when already uplifted to strike the wicked, as the prayers of the pious.
The necessity and advantages of Christian prayer being thus explained, the faithful should also know how many, and what are the parts of which it is composed. That this knowledge appertains to the perfect discharge of the duty of prayer we learn from the Apostle, when, in his Epistle to Timothy, exhorting to pious and holy prayer, he carefully enumerates the parts of which it consists: " I desire therefore first," says he, " that obsecrations, prayers, postulations and thanksgivings be made for all men." [3] Although the shades of distinction between these different parts of prayer are delicate and refined, yet the pastor, should he deem the explanation useful to his people, will consult, on the subject, the writings of St. Hilary and St. Augustine. [4] But as there are two principal parts of prayer, petition and thanksgiving, the sources, as it were, from which all the other spring, they appeared to us of too much import ance to be omitted. When we offer to God the tribute of our worship, we do so either to obtain some favour, or to return him thanks for those with which his bounty every day enriches and adorns us; and each of these God himself declares to be a necessary part of prayer: " Call upon me," says he, " in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shall glorify me." [5]
Who does not know how much we stand in need of the goodness and beneficence of God, if he but consider the extreme destitution and misery of man? Who that has eyes to see, and understanding to judge, and does not know how much the will of God inclines, and how liberal is his bounty towards us?
- ↑ Hilar. in Psal. 63.
- ↑ Exod. xxxii. 10.
- ↑ i Tim. ii. 1.
- ↑ Hilar. in Psal. 140. ad ilia verba, "dirigatur oratio." Aug. epist. 59. ad Paulin. ante med, vid. item Cassian. Colla. 9. c. q. et seq. item D. Thorn. 2. 2. q. 83. 3 p sa i. x ij x . 15. vid. Basil, lib. Const, monast. c. 2.
- ↑ Psal. xlix. 15 Vid. Basil lib.
