Thus far we have drawn the precepts of dying well from the three theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity; and again from the three moral virtues, sobriety, justice, and piety, of all of which the blessed Apostle Paul admonished us. I will now add another precept drawn from the three works of virtue, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, which we learned from the Angel Raphael; for thus we read in the book of Tobit that the angel Raphael spoke: Good is prayer with fasting and alms, more than to lay up treasures of gold (Tob. 12). Now this triad of good works is the fruit of three virtues — religion, mercy, and temperance — which bear a great likeness to piety, justice, and sobriety. For just as piety has regard to God, justice to one's neighbor, and sobriety to oneself, so also prayer, which is the act of religion, has regard to God; almsgiving, which is the act of mercy, has regard to one's neighbor; and fasting, which is the act of abstinence, has regard to oneself. About prayer many have written much; we, according to the design of our work, will explain only three heads: one on the necessity of prayer, another on the fruits of prayer, and a third on the manner of praying fruitfully.
The necessity of prayer is so evident in the divine Scriptures that nothing could be clearer or more expressly enjoined. Although God knows the things of which we stand in need, as the Lord Himself affirms in Matthew (Matt. 6), yet He wills that we ask for them, and that through prayer — as through spiritual hands, or some instrument fitted for this purpose — we should obtain them. Hear the Lord in Luke: We ought always to pray, and not to faint (Luke 18); likewise: Watch at all times, praying (Luke 21). Hear the Apostle: Pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5). Hear Ecclesiasticus: Let nothing hinder you from praying always (Sir. 18). These precepts do not mean that we should do nothing else, but that we should never forget this so wholesome exercise, and should return to it again and again. This the Lord and His Apostle taught us by their example. For Christ and the Apostle did not so always pray as not also to teach the people, and to confirm their preaching by signs and wonders; and yet they could be said to pray always, because they prayed most frequently. In this sense are those words to be understood: My eyes are ever toward the Lord (Ps. 24); and: His praise shall be always in my mouth (Ps. 33); and that saying of the Apostles: They were always in the temple, praising and blessing God (Luke 24).
Now the fruits of prayer are chiefly three: merit, satisfaction, and impetration. Concerning merit, we have the testimony of Christ in the Gospel: "When you pray, you shall not be as the hypocrites, who love to pray standing in the synagogues and at the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Amen I say to you, they have received their reward. But thou, when thou shalt pray, enter into thy chamber, and having shut the door, pray to thy Father in secret; and thy Father who seeth in secret will repay thee" (Matt. 6). By these words the Lord does not forbid prayer to be made in a public place — for He Himself prayed publicly (John 11) before He raised Lazarus — but He forbids public prayer when it is made so that the one who prays may be seen by many, and that out of a desire for vainglory. Otherwise we can pray even in the temple, and there find the chamber of the heart, and in it pray to the Father in secret. Now those words, "will repay thee," signify merit: for just as He said of the Pharisee, "he has received his reward," that is, human praise, so of him who prays in the chamber of the heart, looking to God alone, a reward will be rendered to him by the Father who sees in secret. Concerning satisfaction for past sins, it is known from the practice of the Church, in which, whenever satisfaction is enjoined, almsgiving or fasting is indeed often omitted, but prayer is never omitted. Finally, that prayer obtains many benefits, St. John Chrysostom teaches most beautifully in his two books on prayer, where he uses the comparison of human hands. For just as man is born unarmed, naked, and in need of all things, yet cannot complain of his Creator, because He gave him hands, which are the instrument by which man can provide himself with food, clothing, a house, weapons, and all the rest; so too the spiritual man can do nothing without divine help, but he possesses the power of prayer, as it were the instrument of spiritual instruments, through which he can easily provide all things for himself.
Besides these three principal fruits, there are very many others. For in the first place, prayer enlightens the mind. For it cannot happen that a man should fix the eyes of his mind intently upon God, who is light, without being somewhat enlightened by Him. "Come ye to Him," says David, "and be enlightened" (Ps. 33). Secondly, prayer nourishes hope and confidence. For the more often anyone speaks with another, the more confidently he approaches him. Thirdly, prayer inflames charity and renders the mind more capable of receiving greater gifts, as St. Augustine affirms (Bk. II, On the Lord's Sermon on the Mount, ch. 17). Fourthly, it increases humility and the fear of the Lord. For he who comes to prayer understands that he is God's beggar, and for that reason is wont to appear humbly before Him; and he takes most diligent care not to offend Him whose help he needs in all things. Fifthly, frequent prayer begets in the soul of the one who prays a contempt for all temporal things. For it cannot happen that all earthly things do not grow cheap and sordid to him who contemplates heavenly and eternal things unceasingly. See St. Augustine in the ninth book of the Confessions (Bk. IX, ch. 4 and 10). Sixthly, prayer produces an incredible delight, since through it a man begins to taste how sweet the Lord is. How great this sweetness is can be understood even from this, that we have known some who could not only spend the whole night in prayer, but even join whole days to whole nights without fatigue. Finally, besides profit and pleasure, prayer also brings no small dignity and honor to the one who prays. For even the Angels themselves honor that soul which they see admitted so familiarly and so often to converse with the divine Majesty. See St. John Chrysostom, first book On Praying to God.
It remains that we say something about the manner of praying well, in which consists chiefly the art of living well, and therefore also the art of dying well. For what the Lord says — "Ask, and it shall be given you" (Luke 11), and "Everyone that asketh, receiveth" — St. James declared in his Epistle is to be understood with a condition: if we ask rightly. "You ask," he says, "and you receive not, because you ask amiss" (James 4). We may therefore reason thus: he who asks well for the gift of living well will assuredly receive it; and he who asks well for perseverance in living well until death, and thereby for a happy death itself, will without doubt receive it. Let us therefore briefly explain the conditions of good prayer, that we may learn to pray well, to live well, and to die well.
The first condition is faith, as the Apostle says: "How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed?" (Rom. 10). With this agrees St. James: "But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering" (James 1). Yet this necessity of faith is not to be understood as though we must believe with certainty that God will do what we ask; for then faith would not infrequently prove false, and so we would obtain nothing at all. We must therefore believe that God is most powerful, most wise, most good, and most faithful; and hence that He is able, and knows, and is ready to do what we ask, if it be fitting for Him to give and expedient for us to receive what we have asked. This faith Christ demanded of those two blind men who desired to be cured: "Do you believe that I can do this unto you?" (Matt. 9). With the same faith David prayed for his sick son; for that he did not believe with certainty that God would do it, but that He could do what was asked, those words demonstrate: "Who knoweth whether the Lord may not grant him to me?" (2 Sam. 12). That the Apostle Paul also prayed with like faith, that the thorn of the flesh might be taken away from him, cannot be doubted (2 Cor. 12); for he prayed out of faith, and his faith would have been false if he had believed with certainty that God would do what he asked at that time — for he did not then obtain what he asked. Nor does the Church pray with any other faith when she asks that all heretics, pagans, schismatics, and finally bad Christians be converted to penance, though it is certain that not all of them are converted. On this matter see St. Prosper in the books On the Vocation of the Gentiles (Bk. I, ch. 4).
The second condition of good prayer, and a most necessary one, is hope, or confidence. For although by faith, which is a work of the understanding, we need not determine with certainty that God will do what we ask, yet by hope and confidence, which is an act of the will, we must cling firmly to the divine goodness, and trust with certainty that God will do what we ask. This condition the Lord looked for in the paralytic, to whom He said: "Be of good heart, son; thy sins are forgiven thee" (Matt. 9). The same the Apostle requires of all when he says: "Let us go therefore with confidence to the throne of His grace" (Heb. 4); and long before, the Prophet introduced God saying: "Because he hoped in Me, I will deliver him" (Ps. 90). But because confidence is born of perfect faith, when Scripture requires faith for great things it adds something pertaining to confidence. Hence we read in Mark: "Whosoever shall say to this mountain, Be thou removed and cast into the sea, and shall not stagger in his heart, but shall believe that whatsoever he saith cometh to pass, it shall be done unto him" (Mark 11). Of that faith which begets confidence is to be understood that saying of the Apostle: "And if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains," etc. (1 Cor. 13). Hence John Cassian writes in the conference on prayer (Conf. IX, ch. 32) that a sure sign of obtaining one's request is when a person in prayer confidently trusts that he will receive what he asks, in no way wavers in that petition, and is flooded with spiritual joy as he prays.
The third condition is charity, or justice, by which we are justified from sins; for the benefits of God are not surely obtained except by those who are His friends. For so speaks David in the Psalms: "The eyes of the Lord are upon the just, and His ears are open to their prayers" (Ps. 33); and in another place: "If I have beheld iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me" (Ps. 65). And in the New Testament the Lord says: "If you abide in Me, and My words — that is, My precepts — abide in you, you shall ask whatever you will, and it shall be done unto you" (John 15); and the beloved disciple says: "If our heart reprehend us not, we have confidence toward God; and whatsoever we shall ask, we shall receive of Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight" (1 John 3). Nor is it contrary to this doctrine that the publican, begging God's pardon for his sins, went away justified; for a penitent sinner does not obtain as a sinner, but as a penitent: as a sinner he is an enemy of God, but as a penitent he begins to be a friend of God. For he who sins does what displeases God; but he who repents of having sinned does what most pleases God.
The fourth condition is humility, because he who prays trusts not in his own justice but in the goodness of God. "Upon whom shall I look," says God, "but upon him that is poor and little, and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at My words?" (Isa. 66). Ecclesiasticus adds: "The prayer of him that humbleth himself shall pierce the clouds, and it shall not depart until the Most High beholdeth" (Sir. 35).
The fifth condition is devotion, which makes the one who prays not pray negligently, as most people are accustomed to do, but pray attentively, earnestly, diligently, and ardently. For the Lord severely rebukes those who pray with the lips alone: "This people," says the Lord through Isaiah, "honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me." (Isa. 29; Matt. 15) Now this virtue arises from a living faith, one existing not only in habit but in act. For he who attentively and with firm faith reflects how great is the majesty of God, how great our own lowliness, and how great the thing we ask, can hardly fail to approach prayer with the utmost humility, reverence, devotion, and ardor.
It is fitting to add here two excellent testimonies of the holy Fathers. St. Jerome, in his Dialogue against the Luciferians, says: "I attend to prayer. I would not pray if I did not believe; but if I truly believed, I would cleanse that heart in which God is seen; I would beat my breast with my hands; I would bathe my cheeks with tears; I would shudder in body and grow pale in countenance; I would lie at my Lord's feet, and embracing those feet fastened to the trunk of the cross, I would not let go before I had obtained mercy. But now, very often while I am praying, I either stroll through the porticoes, or reckon up my interest, or, carried away by a base thought, I even entertain things it is shameful to speak of. Where is faith? Do we suppose that Jonah prayed thus? Or the three youths? Or Daniel among the lions? Or most certainly the thief on the cross?" St. Bernard, in his Sermon on the Four Ways of Praying, says: "It is altogether necessary," he says, "that at the time of prayer we enter the heavenly court—that court in which the King of kings sits upon a starry throne, surrounded by an innumerable and ineffable host of blessed spirits. With how great reverence, then, and how great humility ought a vile little frog, crawling out of its own swamp, to approach that place? How trembling, how suppliant, how humble and anxious, and with his whole mind intent, can a poor little man appear before the Majesty of glory, in the presence of the Angels, in the council and assembly of the just? In all our actions, therefore, we have need of great vigilance of mind, but especially in prayer." The sixth condition is perseverance, which the Lord commended by two parables related in the Evangelist Luke. (Luke 11) The former is about the man who went at midnight to his friend to ask him to lend him three loaves; and though he was repeatedly refused because it was an inconvenient hour, nevertheless, persevering in his request, he obtained what he sought. (Luke 18) The latter is about the widow who kept pleading with the judge to vindicate her against her adversary; and though that judge was very wicked, neither fearing God nor respecting man, nevertheless, overcome by the woman's perseverance and importunity, he vindicated her against her adversary. From these the Lord concludes that we must persevere all the more in prayer to God, who is just and gracious. And as St. James adds: "He giveth to all abundantly, and upbraideth not" (Jas. 1); that is, He gives His gifts liberally to all who ask, and does not upbraid their importunity, namely that they are too often troublesome in asking; for God is merciful without measure. St. Augustine adds, in his exposition of the last verse of Psalm 66, on those words "Blessed be God, who hath not turned away my prayer, nor His mercy from me": "If you see that your prayer has not been turned away, be assured that His mercy has not been turned away from you."