Each week of Lent,
laudable Practice is presenting words from Jeremy Taylor reflecting on fundamental practices shared by the Christian traditions. Today's practice is private prayer. Taylor here echoes the deeply patristic tradition of understanding the Lord's Prayer both as the Dominical prayer for all Christians and the form to guide all our prayer.
This extract begins by expounding the significance of private prayer to the Christian life, quoting patristic witnesses to this effect. Prayer here is a chief means of sanctification, making us a shrine of the Triune God. The commentary on the petitions of the Lord's Prayer demonstrates how this Prayer is "mysterious, and, like the treasures of the Spirit, full of wisdom and latent senses", a nourishing well from which we to drink deeply, as it guides and shapes our prayers.
The extract then concludes with Taylor addressing three practical aspects of prayer: when we are to pray, distractions in prayer, and posture in prayer. He invokes the apostolic exhortation to "pray always", mindful that this call coheres with, and does not contradict, the "occasions and necessities" of our daily life. The exhortation, therefore, is not a call to abandon secular life for the cloister: it is, in good Reformation fashion, to maintain the spirit of prayer in the secular order. Regarding distractions, he both points to the need for a growing discipline - "mortification of our secular desires" - while also recommending the use of "ejaculatory prayers and short breathings" to sustain us in ongoing prayer. In terms of posture, Taylor notes the diversity of posture for prayer in the Christian tradition, while also urging the bowed head and "deportment ... grave, decent, humble, apt for adoration". There is a wisdom here, avoiding a prescriptive approach, while recognising that, as embodied beings, posture does have significance in aiding our approach to prayer.
Taylor here provides guidance, particularly addressed to laity, to encourage and sustain a faithful culture of private prayer, "the great duty, and the greatest privilege of a Christian". Shaped by the Lord's Prayer, our private prayer sanctifies us and our circumstances, a means of renewing us, in communion with our fellow Christians, as children of the same Heavenly Father.
The Soul of a Christian is the house of God; "Ye are God's building," saith St. Paul; but the house of God is the house of prayer; and therefore prayer is the work of the soul, whose organs are intended for instruments of the divine praises; and when every stop and pause of those instruments is but the conclusion of a collect, and every breathing is a prayer, then the body becomes a temple, and the soul is the sanctuary, and more private recess, and place of intercourse. Prayer is the great duty, and the greatest privilege of a Christian it is his intercourse with God, his sanctuary in troubles, his remedy for sins, his cure of griefs; and, as St. Gregory calls it, "It is the principal instrument whereby we minister to God, in execution of the decrees of eternal predestination:" and those things which God intends for us, we bring to ourselves by the mediation of holy prayers. Prayer is the [here quoting Damascene] "ascent of the mind to God, and a petitioning for such things as we need for our support and duty." It is an abstract and summary of Christian religion.
... the matter of our prayers is best taught us in the form our Lord taught his disciples; which because it is short, mysterious, and, like the treasures of the Spirit, full of wisdom and latent senses, it is not improper to draw forth those excellencies which are intended and signified by every petition, that by so
excellent an authority we may know what it is lawful to beg of God.
Our Father which art in heaven ... it is observable that Christ here speaking concerning private prayer,
does describe it in a form of plural signification, to tell us, that we are to draw into the communication of our prayers all those who are confederated in the common relation of sons of the same father ...
Which art in heaven, tells us where our hopes and hearts must be fixed, whither our desires and our prayers must tend. Sursum corda; where our treasure is, there must our hearts be also ...
Hallowed by they name ... The name of God is representative of God himself, and it signifies, Be thou worshipped and adored, be thou thanked and celebrated with honour and eucharist ...
Thy kingdom come ... it intimates our desires that the promise of the Father, and the prophecies of old,
and the Holy Ghost, the comforter, may come upon us. Let that anointing from above descend upon us, whereby we may be anointed kings and priests, in a spiritual kingdom and priesthood, by a holy chrism
Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven, That is, the whole economy and dispensation of thy providence be the guide of the world, and the measure of our desire; that we be patient in all accidents, conformable to God's will both in doing and in suffering, submitting to changes, and even to persecutions, and doing all God's will: which because without God's aid we cannot do, therefore we beg it of him by prayer ...
Give us this day our daily bread ... there is also a bread which came down from heaven, a diviner nutriment of our souls, the food and wine of angels; Christ himself, as he communicates himself in the expresses of his word and sacrament: and if we be destitute of this bread, we are miserable and perishing people. We must pray that our souls also may feed upon those celestial viands prepared for us in the antepasts of the gospel, till the great and fuller meal of the supper of the Lamb shall answer all our prayers, and satisfy every desire.
Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us ... And this we pray
with a tacit obligation to forgive: for so only, and upon that condition we beg pardon to be given or
continued respectively ; that is, as we from our hearts forgive them that did us injury in any kind, never entertaining so much as a thought of revenge, but contrariwise, loving them that did us wrong; for so we beg that God should do to us. And, therefore, it is but a lesser revenge to say, I will forgive, but I will never have to do with him: for if he become an object of charity, we must have to do with him to relieve him; because he needs prayers, we must have to do with him, and pray for him ...
And lead us not into temptation. St. Cyprian, out of an old Latin copy, reads it, Suffer us not to be led into temptation; that is, suffer us not to be overcome by temptation. And therefore we are bound to prevent our access to such temptation whose very approximation is dangerous ... But of what nature soever the temptations be, whether they be such whose approach a Christian is bound to fear, or such which are the certain lot of Christians, (such are troubles and persecutions, into which when we enter we must count it joy,) yet we are to pray that we enter not into the possession of the temptation, that we be not overcome by it.
But deliver us from evil ... deliver us from the evil one, who is interested as an enemy in every hostility and in every danger. Let not Satan have any power or advantage over us; and let not evil men prevail upon us in our danger, much less to our ruin. Make us safe under the covering of thy wings against all fraud and every violence, that no temptation destroy our hopes, or break our strength, or alter our state, or overthrow our glories ...
For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory for ever. That is , these things which we beg are for the honour of thy kingdom, for the manifestation of thy power, and the glory of thy name and mercies. And it is an express doxology or adoration, which is apt and fit to conclude all our prayers and addresses to God.
... so must we pray always; that is, every day, and many times every ay, according to our occasions and necessities, or our devotion and zeal, or as we are determined by the customs and laws of a church; never giving over through weariness or distrust, often renewing our desires by a continual succession of devotions, returning at certain and determinate periods ...
And although there is no rule to determine the degree of our actual attention, and it is ordinarily impossible never to wander with a thought, or to be interrupted with a sudden emission into our spirit in the midst of prayers; yet our duty is, by mortification of our secular desires, by suppression of all our irregular passions, by reducing them to indifferency, by severity of spirit, by enkindling our holy appetites and desires of holy things, by silence and meditation and repose, to get as forward in this
excellency as we can. To which also we may be very much helped by ejaculatory prayers and short
breathings: in which as, by reason of their short abode upon the spirit, there is less fear of diversion, so also they may so often be renewed, that nothing of the devotion may be unspent or expire for wart of oil to feed and entertain the flame ...
The posture of bodies in prayer had as great variety as the ceremonies and civilities of several nations came to. The Jews most commonly prayed standing: so did the Pharisee and the Publican in the temple; so did the primitive Christians in all their greater festivals and intervals of jubilee: in their penances they kneeled. The monks in Cassian sat when they sang the Psalter. And in every country, whatsoever by the custom of the nation was a symbol of reverence and humility, of silence and attention, of gravity and modesty, that posture they translated to their prayers. But in all nations bowing the head, that is, a laying down our glory at the feet of God, was the manner of worshippers ...
Our deportment ought to be grave, decent, humble, apt for adoration, apt to edify: and when we address ourselves to prayer, not instantly to leap into the office ... without preface or preparatory affections; but, considering in what presence we speak, and to what purposes, let us balance our fervour with reverential fear: and when we have done, not rise from the ground as if we vaulted, or were glad we had done; but, as we begin with desires of assistance, so end with desires of pardon and acceptance, concluding our longer offices with a shorter mental prayer of more private reflection and reverence, designing to mend what we have done amiss, or to give thanks and proceed if we did well, and according to our powers.
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