FIFTH TREATISE

ON THE EXCELLENCY OF PRAYER

CHAPTER I
Of the Value and Excellence of Prayer

THE glorious Apostle and Evangelist St. John, in the fifth and eighth chapters of the
Apocalypse, expresses admirably well the excellency and merit of prayer. There came an
angel and stood before the altar, having in his hand a thurible of gold, to whom was given much
incense, to the end he should offer up of the prayers of the saints upon the golden altar which was
before the throne of God. And the smoke of the incense of these prayers went up from the hand of
the angel to the presence of God (Apoc. viii. 3-4). St. Chrysostom says that one proof of the
merit of prayer is that in the Holy Scripture it alone is compared to thymiama, which
was a composition of incense and of many other admirable perfumes; for as the smell of
well-composed thymiama is very delicious, so prayer also, when well made, is very
acceptable to God and gives great joy to the angels and all the citizens of heaven. Thus
St. John, speaking in such human language as we can speak, says that those heavenly
beings hold in their hands pouncet-boxes full of admirable perfumes, which are the
prayers of the saints, and these they apply again and again to their most pure nostrils to
enjoy that sweet odor (Apoc. v. 8).
St. Augustine, speaking of prayer, says: “What more excellent than prayer? What
more useful and profitable? What sweeter and more delicious? What higher and more
exalted in the whole scheme of our Christian religion?” The same says St. Gregory of
Nyssa: “Nothing of the things of this life that are esteemed and valued has the
advantage of prayer.” St. Bernard says that, though it is quite an ordinary thing for the
angels to assist God’s servants by their invisible presence, to deliver them from the
deceits and machinations of the enemy, and to raise their desires to serve God with
greater fervor, yet it is especially when we are occupied in making our prayer that these
angelic spirits assist us. He quotes to this effect many passages of Holy Scripture, as that
of the psalmist: In the sight and presence of the angels I will praise thee (Psalm Cxxxvii. 1);
and again: There went forward the princes along with the singers in the midst of the young
maidens sounding their timbrels (Psalm lxvii. 26), which he interprets, saying that the
angels join with those who make prayer; and again what the angel said to Toby: When
thou didst pray with tears, I offered thy prayer to God (Tob. xii. 12). In the instant that prayer
goes out from the mouth of him that prays, at once the angels, who are hard by, catch it
up and present it to God. St. Hilary says the same: “The angels preside over the prayers
of the saints and offer them each day to God.” Thus, when we are at prayer, we are
surrounded by angels, in the midst of angels, doing the office of angels, exercising
ourselves in what we are to do forever in heaven, praising and blessing the Lord; and
for this we are specially favored and loved by the angels as being their companions now
and destined to be their companions hereafter, filling up the seats of their former
companions who fell.
St. John Chrysostom, speaking of the excellences of prayer and wishing to say
great things of it, says that one of the greatest of great things that it is possible to say of
it is that whoever is at prayer is dealing and conversing with God. “Consider the height,
dignity, and glory to which the Lord has raised you, in that you can speak and converse
with God, hold conversations and colloquies with Jesus Christ, desire what you would,
and ask for what you desire”—Considera quanta est tibi concessa felicitas, quanta gloria
attributa orationibus, fabulari cum Deo, cum Christo miscere colloquia, optare quod velis, quod
desideras postulare. No tongue, he says, suffices to declare the dignity and height of this
intercourse and conversation with God or its utility and profit for ourselves. If in those
who here on earth ordinarily converse with prudent and wise men, in a short time there
is felt a notable improvement, and it is recognized that they have advanced in prudence
and wisdom, and to those who converse with good men virtue and goodness is
communicated—hence the proverb: “Deal with the good and you shall be one of
them”—what shall be said of those who speak and converse again and again with God?
Approach to the Lord and ye shall receive light from Him (Psalm xxxiii. 6). What light and
knowledge, what blessings and benefits shall they receive from such dealing and
conversation! And so St. John Chrysostom says that there is nothing that makes us grow
so much in virtue as frequent prayer and dealing and conversing repeatedly with God,
because thereby there comes to be formed the heart of a generous and high-souled man,
a heart ready to despise the things of the world and to soar above them, uniting and
transforming itself in a manner unto God and becoming spiritual and holy.

CHAPTER II
Of the Need in Which We Stand of Prayer

OF the need in which we stand of prayer we have abundant experience; would to God
we had not so much! For man, being in such need of the favor of God by reason of his
being liable to so many falls, surrounded by so many dangerous enemies, and wanting
so many things for soul and body, has no other resource but constant recourse to God,
begging with his whole heart divine favor and aid in all his dangers and necessities. So
King Josaphat said, coming to be surrounded by enemies: As we are so weak and so poor
and so needy and know not what to do, we have no other resource but to raise our eyes to God,
and ask in prayer for what we want and stand in need of (II Chron. xx. 12). So Pope Celestine
in a decretal letter to teach the importance of prayer, says: “I know nothing better to say
to you than what my predecessor, Zozimus, said: ‘What time is there in which we have
not need of God?’ None. Then in every time, in all cases, in all affairs we need to have
recourse to Him by prayer and crave His favor; great pride it is for a weak and
miserable man to presume anything of himself”—In omnibus igitur actibus, causis,
cogitationibus, motibus, adiutor et protector orandus est Deus.
St. Thomas, treating of prayer, gives one very good and substantial reason for its
necessity, and it is the teaching of Saints Damascene, Augustine, Basil, Chrysostom, and
Gregory, that what God by His divine providence and disposition has determined from
eternity to give to souls, that He gives them in time by this means of prayer, and on this
means depends the deliverance, salvation, conversion, and cure of many souls and the
progress and perfection of others. Thus, just as God has determined and arranged that
by means of matrimony the human race should be multiplied, and by means of
ploughing and sowing and cultivating the earth there should be abundance of bread
and wine and other fruits, and by means of craftsmen and building materials there
should be houses and buildings, so He has determined to work many effects in the
world and impart many graces and gifts to souls by this means of prayer. So Christ our
Redeemer says in the Gospel: Ask and it shall be given you, seek and ye shall find, knock and
it shall be opened unto you; for everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and
the door shall be opened to him that knocked (Matt. vii. 7). Thus this is the means and this
the conduct whereby the Lord wishes to supply our needs and enrich our poverty and
fill us with good things and graces. Hereby is well seen the great need that we have of
having recourse to prayer. And so the saints make a good comparison in saying that it is
a chain of gold attached to heaven and reaching right down to earth, whereby all good
things are lowered and let down to us and whereby we must mount up to God. Or they
say that it is the ladder of Jacob, that reached from earth to heaven, whereby angels
ascended and descended. The glorious St. Augustine says that prayer is the key of
heaven that fits all the gates of heaven and all the coffers of the treasures of God, and
nothing hidden from it. And elsewhere he says that what bread is to the body, prayer is
to the soul. The same says the holy martyr and abbot Nilus.
One of the chief reasons whereby the saints declare on the one hand the value
and worth of prayer and on the other the great need in which we stand of it, is that
prayer is a chief and most efficacious means to attune and put in order our whole life
and to overcome and smooth down all the difficulties that present themselves in the
way of virtue. And so they say that on it depends the government of our whole life; and
that, when prayer is well in order, life is well in order; and when prayer gets out of
order, everything else gets out of order. “He knows how to live well, who knows how to
pray well”—Recte novit vivere, qui recte novit orare, says St. Augustine. And St. John
Climacus says that a servant of God once spoke a memorable word to him, which was
this, that from early morning he knew what was to be the order of the whole day;
meaning that, if he made his morning prayer well, all the rest went well, and
contrariwise when he did not make his morning prayer well. And it is the same with all
the rest of life. And so we ourselves very commonly experience that when we make our
prayer well, we go on in such good order, so cheerful, so vigorous, so full of good
purposes and desires, that it is something to praise God for; and, contrariwise, when we
are careless at prayer, everything goes amiss. St. Bonaventure says: ‘Where prayer fails,
thereupon everything goes forlorn;” thereupon tepidity sets in, thereupon little by little
the spirit begins to grow feeble and to wither and to lose that vigor and heartiness
which it once had; thereupon, I know not how, all those holy purposes and thoughts of
first fervor disappear and all our passions begin to awake and revive; thereupon the
man comes out a lover of vain mirth, a lover of talking, laughing and enjoyment, and
such like other vanities; and what is worse, thereupon there bursts into new life the
appetite of vainglory, of anger, of envy, of ambition, and the like, which before seemed
to be dead.
The Abbot Nilus says that prayer should be the looking-glass of the religious. In
it we should look and look again every day for a long time to see and recognize our
faults, to go on getting rid of anything ugly that we find in ourselves. In this
looking-glass we should look and study the virtues that shine forth in Christ, in order
with them to adorn and beautify our soul. The glorious St. Francis says: “One of the
things most desirable in a religious is the grace of prayer: without it there is no hope of
fruit or improvement; with it everything may be hoped for.” St. Thomas Aquinas,
among other grave utterances related in his Life, said that a religious without prayer
was a soldier in battle naked and without arms. That holy archbishop of Valentia, Friar
Thomas of Villanova, said that prayer was like the natural heat of the stomach, without
which it is impossible for the natural life to be preserved, or for any food to do good;
whereas with it everything is well digested and assimilated, the man is nourished, and
all the members are supplied with virtue and strength enough to do their work. So, he
says, without prayer the spiritual life cannot be preserved; with it, it is preserved; with
it, the man revives and recovers spiritual strength enough for all the works of obedience
that he has to do and for all the occasions and afflictions that may offer; with prayer, all
those things are digested and made light, and all converted to the profit of the soul.
Finally, if we use prayer as we ought, we shall find therein a remedy for all our faults
and a means of preserving ourselves in virtue and religion. If perchance you become
careless in obedience and observance of rules, if you begin to grow disorderly on any
point, if passion and evil habit begin to revive, all this will be checked and remedied, by
favor of the Lord, at once when we betake ourselves to prayer. And if you grow remiss
in prayer itself and careless therein, you must cure and recover yourself by that same
means. In prayer we have a universal remedy even for a falling off in prayer itself. Thus
they make an excellent comparison who say that prayer is as the hand in the body,
which is an instrument for all the body and even for itself, since the hand works for the
sustenance and clothing of the whole body and for all other things necessary for body
and soul and even for itself; for if it is ailing, the hand waits on the hand; if it is dirty,
the hand washes the hand; if it is cold, the hand warms the hand; in short, the hands do
everything. So it is with prayer.

CHAPTER III
That We Owe Much to God for Having Made So Easy for Us a Thing at Once So
Excellent and So Necessary

IT will be reasonable for us to consider and ponder here the great and singular favor
that the Lord has done us. Prayer being in itself a thing so high and excellent and on the
other hand so necessary for us, God has made it so easy for all that it is always in our
power to take to it in every place and at every time. With me is prayer to make to God who
giveth me life, says the Prophet David (Psalm xli. 9). The gates of God’s mercy are never
closed; they are wide open to all at every time and at every hour. We shall always find
Him disengaged and desirous to do us good, and even soliciting us to ask. There is an
excellent reflection that is often made to this effect. If God were to give leave once a
month only for all who would to go in and address Him, promising to give them an
audience willingly and to do them favors, it would be a boon highly valued, as it would
be if a temporal king made a similar offer. How much more reasonable is it that we
should value the offer and invitation that God makes us herein, not merely once a
month, but every day and many times a day! At night and at morning and at midday and in
the afternoon, says the prophet, embracing all times, I will tell and put before God (Psalm
liv. 18) my labors and miseries, in full confidence that every time and at whatever hour I
approach Him He will hear me and do me favors. God is not like men, annoyed at
being asked, for, unlike them, He is none the poorer for giving. A man has so much the
less, by how much he bestows on another; he robs himself of that which he gives and is
the poorer for his liberality. It is for this reason, then, that men are annoyed at being
asked; and if they give once or twice with good will, they are tired of it the third time,
and give nothing or give in such a way that they are never asked again. God, as St. Paul
says, is rich and liberal to all who call upon him (Rom. x. 12). He is infinitely rich; and as He
makes Himself none the poorer by giving, so He is not angry nor weary at people
asking of Him, though it be every minute and He have the whole world begging at His
door. He is rich enough for all and to enrich all, without ceasing to be as rich as before;
and as the fund of His riches is infinite, so also the source of His mercy in inexhaustible,
to meet the needs of all; and He desires that we should beg of Him and have recourse to
Him very frequently. It will be reasonable, then, for us to acknowledge and be grateful
for so great a favor and benefit and to make the best of so large and advantageous a
licence, taking care to be very assiduous in prayer. For, as St. Augustine says upon these
words of the psalmist: Blessed be our Lord, who has not deprived me of my prayer nor of his
mercy. We must believe for certain that if God withdraw not from us the spirit of prayer,
neither will He withdraw His mercy. Wherefore, that His mercy may never forsake us,
let us never leave off the exercise of prayer.

CHAPTER IV
Of Two Sorts of Mental Prayer

LEAVING apart vocal prayer, a thing so holy and in such common use in the Church of
God, we will for the present treat only of mental prayer, of which St. Paul writes: I will
pray, sing, and cry to God in spirit and with my heart (I Cor. xiv. 15). There are two sorts of
mental prayer, one common and easy, the other very special, extraordinary, and
advanced, something received rather than made, according to the saying of ancient
saints well versed in prayer. St. Denis the Areopagite says of his master, Hierotheus,
that erat patiens divina, that is to say, he rather received what God gave than did things
for himself. There is a very great difference between these two sorts of prayer; the
former may in some measure be taught by words, the second we cannot so teach
because no words are able to express it. It is a hidden manna, which no man knoweth but
him that receiveth it (Apoc. ii.17). Even the receiver cannot explain how it is nor even
properly understand how it is, as Cassian well observes, quoting to this effect what he
calls a divine and heavenly saying of the blessed St. Anthony Abbot: “Prayer is not
perfect so long as the monk at prayer is aware of the very fact that he is praying.” This
high and exalted prayer does not leave room for the person to bethink himself, nor
reflect on what he is about, “suffering,” we should say, rather than “doing.” It happens
not unfrequently that a man has his mind so taken up and absorbed in some business
that he remembers not himself, nor where he is, nor reflects upon what he thinks, nor
observes how he thinks. It is the same in this perfect prayer, wherein man is so ravished
and lost in God that he thinks no more of himself, nor understands how this is, nor
what way it goes, nor what way it comes, nor keeps any account of methods,
preambles, or points, nor how he must now do this and now that. This is what
happened to St. Anthony himself, of which Cassian makes mention, that oftentimes
having set himself to prayer overnight, he remained in it till the next day, when, the
light falling upon his eyes, he complained that the sun rose too soon to deprive him of
those lights which God interiorly communicated unto him. St. Bernard, speaking of this
kind of prayer, says that we very seldom find it, and when we do, its stay is very short.
Rara hora, parva mora; so that how long time soever it lasts, it seems to us all to have
been done in a moment. St. Augustine, experiencing in himself the effects it produces,
says: “Lord, Thou leadest me on to a tenderness very unusual, and a strange sweetness,
such that if it were to go on, I know not where it would stop.” Even in this most special
prayer and contemplation St. Bernard marks three degrees. The first he compares to
eating; the second to drinking, which is easier and pleasanter than eating because there
is no labor for the teeth; the third in inebriation. And he quotes the saying of the spouse
in the Canticles: Eat, my friends, and drink and be inebriated, my dear ones (Cant. v.1). All
this is a case of receiving rather than of doing. Sometimes the gardener draws water
from his well by force of his arms; at others, standing with folded arms, he sees the
flood from heaven soaking the earth without his doing anything else but receive it and
guide it to the roots of the trees to make them more fruitful. So there are two kinds of
prayer: the one is sought with industry, aided by God; the other is found ready made.
By the first you go toiling and begging, and living on what you beg; the second sets
before you a full table, which God has spread for you to satisfy your hunger, a rich and
abundant table, signified by those words of the spouse: The king hath led me into his
cellars (Cant. i. 3). And again: I will gladden them in the house of my prayer (Isaias lvi. 7).
This prayer is a particular gift of God, a gift which He bestows upon whom He
pleases; sometimes in reward of services done and much mortification practised and
suffering borne for His love; at other times as a gracious gift of sheer liberality
irrespective of previous merits, as it is said in the Gospel: Is it not lawful for me to do what
I please? (Matt. xx. 15). Anyhow, it is not a thing that we can teach. And so certain
authors have been reproved and prohibited for having undertaken to teach what cannot
be learned nor taught, making a matter of art what is above all art, as though in their
way one could infallibly arrive at becoming a contemplative. Gerson severely
reprehends this in a book he composed against Ruysbroek, in these words: “You have
torn the flower from the root.” As the flower cut from the root and taken in hand soon
withers and loses its beauty, so these intimate communications of God to the soul in this
high and lofty prayer are of such a nature that in the attempt to take them out of their
place and explain and share them with others, they lose their luster and splendor. So do
they act who try to explain and teach what cannot be explained or understood. These
analogical acts, these transformations of the soul, this silence, this self-annihilation, this
immediate union, this depth of Tauler—what is the use of talking of such things if you
understand them not, nor know what you are talking about? Nay, some say, and say
well, that there is this difference between this divine science and other sciences, that in
other sciences, before you learn them, you must learn their terms, whereas in this you
cannot understand the terms till you perfectly possess and are master of the science. In
others, the theory precedes the practice; in this, the practice goes before the theory.
I say still further that not only we cannot express what this prayer is, nor teach it
to others, but you must not seek to apply yourself to it nor raise yourself to it if God
does not raise you, apply you, and lift you up to it. That would be great pride and
presumption, and you would deserve to be deprived of the grace of prayer that you
have and be left without any. He hath led me, says the spouse, into his cellar (Cant. ii. 4).
This entry which God gives to the soul into His privacy and into His wine cellar, to sate
and inebriate her with His love, is a most particular gift of the Lord; the bride did not go
in by herself, no, not until her Beloved took her by the hand and led her in. That lifting
of yourself up to the kiss of His mouth is not a thing that you can or ought to do unless
He Himself lifts you up. It would be great impertinence and audacity. Even the bride
does not dare do that—she is too bashful and humble for that —but she begs of her
Beloved to give her this kiss: Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth; meaning, as St.
Bernard says: “I cannot of my own strength attain to such love and such high union and
contemplation as this unless He give it me.” It is His goodness and gracious liberality
that must raise us to this kiss of the mouth, to this so high prayer and contemplation, if
He be pleased that we should reach it. It is not a thing that we can teach or that we can
or ought to lay ourselves out for.