we know by experience, is a great help to a true change of life. After having made choice of a confessor, you should not leave him without a just and manifest cause. ”Every time," says St. Teresa, ”That I resolved to leave my confessor, I felt within me a reproof more painful than that which I received from him."
SERMON XXVI. FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER.
ON THE CONDITIONS OF PRAYER.
"Ask, and ye shall receive." JOHN xvi. 24.
IN the thirty-ninth Sermon I shall show the strict necessity of prayer, and its infallible efficacy to obtain for us all the graces which can be conducive to our eternal salvation. ”Prayer," says St. Cyprian, ”is omnipotent; it is one; it can do all things." We read in Ecclesiasticus that God has never refused to hear any one who invoked his aid. ”Who hath called upon him, and he hath despised him?" (Eccl. ii. 12.) This he never can do; for he has promised to hear all who pray to him. ”Ask, and ye shall receive." But this promise extends only to prayer which has the necessary conditions. Many pray; but because they pray negligently, they do not obtain the graces they deserve. ”You ask, and receive not, because you ask amiss." (St. James iv. 3.) To pray as we ought, we must pray, first, with humility; secondly, with confidence; and thirdly, with perseverance.
First Point. "We must pray with humility.
1. St. James tells us, that God rejects the prayers of the proud: "God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble" (iv. 6). He cannot bear the proud; he rejects their petitions, and refuses to hear them. Let those proud Christians who trust in their own strength, and think themselves better than others, attend to this, and let them remember that their prayers shall be rejected by the Lord.
