On Prayer
From the treatise On Prayer by Tertullian, priest (d. 259)
The spiritual offering of prayer
Prayer is the offering in spirit that has done away with the sacrifices of old. What good do I receive from the multiplicity of your sacrifices? asks God. I have enough of burnt offerings of rams, and I do not want the fat of lambs and the blood of bulls and goats. Who has asked for these from your hands?
What God has asked for we learn from the Gospel. The hour will come, he says, when true worships will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. God Is spirit and so he looks for worshipers who are like himself.
We are true worshipers and true priests. We pray in spirit, and so offer in spirit the sacrifice of prayer. Prayer is an offering that belongs to God and is acceptable to him: it is the offering he has asked for, the offering he planned as his own.
We must dedicate this offering with our whole heart, we must fatten it on faith, tend it by truth, keep it unblemished through innocence and clean through chastity, and crown it with love. We must escort it to the altar of God in a procession of good works to the sound of psalms and hymns. Then it will gain for us all that we ask of God.
Since God asks for prayer offered in spirit and in truth, how can he deny anything to this kind of prayer? How great is the evidence of its power, as we read and hear, and believe.
Of old, prayer was able to rescue from fire and beasts and hunger, even before it received its perfection from Christ. How much greater then is the power of Christian prayer. No longer does prayer bring an angel of comfort to the heart of a fiery furnace, or close up the mouths of lions, or transport to the hungry food from the fields. No longer does it remove all sense of pain by the grace it wins for others. But it gives the armor of patience to those who suffer, who feel pain, who are distressed. It strengthens the power of grace, so that faith may know what it is gaining from the Lord, and understand what it is suffering for the name of God.
In the past, prayer was able to bring down punishment, rout armies, withhold the blessing of rain. Now, however, the prayer of the just turns aside the whole anger of God, keeps vigil for its enemies, pleads for persecutors. Is it any wonder that it can call down water from heaven when it could obtain fire from heaven as well? Prayer is the one thing that can conquer God. But Christ has willed that it should work no evil, and has given it all power over good.
Its only art is to call back the souls of the dead from the very journey into death, to give strength to the weak, to heal the sick, to exorcise the possessed, to open prison cells, to free the innocent from their chains. Prayer cleanses from sin, drives away temptations, stamps out persecutions, comforts the fainthearted, gives new strength to the courageous, brings travelers safely home, calms the waves, confounds robbers, feeds the poor, overrules the rich, lifts up the fallen, supports those who are falling, sustains those who stand firm.
All the angels pray. Every creature prays. Cattle and wild beasts pray and bend the knee. As they come from their barns and caves they look up to heaven and call out, lifting up their spirit in their own fashion. The birds too rise and lift themselves up to heaven: they open out their wings, instead of hands, in the form of a cross and give voice to what seems to be a prayer.
What more need be said on this duty of prayer? Even the Lord himself prayed. To him be honor and power for ever and ever. Amen.”
Source: The Liturgy of the Hours – Office of Readings
Tertullian (d. 259) was born the son of a Roman centurion probably in Carthage around the year 160. He was well educated and familiar with Roman law. Well versed in both in Latin and Greek, Tertullian was trained in oratory skills, philosophy, logic and rhetoric. He was quick with wit and delivered his arguments with compelling logic. He became a Christian convert around the age of 37 and became a priest in the Church at Carthage. Adopting certain ideals of the Montanists, he separated from the Church and formed his own sect, which was later reconciled to the Church by St. Augustine. St. Jerome writes that he lived to a very old age. Tertullian wrote an address “To the Martyrs” in 197 and a number of highly acclaimed apologetic works including “Ad nationes,” a refutation of the calumnies against and the unreasonable hatred of Christians by the pagans and levied a stinging attack against the gods of the pagans.
Later, he developed his riveting “Apologeticus”, addressed to the rulers of the empire and to the administrators of justice. “Ad nationes” attacked the popular prejudices against Christians while “Apologeticus” worked to persuade the rulers to administer justice to Christians in imitation of the Greek practice of fairness in the administration of the law. He appeals to reason demonstrating that the ancient “sacred books” of Christians, offer proof of their authenticity and divine source by the fulfillment of the prophecies they contain. To the rulers he explained that Christ is truly God, pointing out that Christ was born of a virgin, his two comings, his miracles, his death and resurrection, and the forty days thereafter spent with his disciples and the spread of the message of the gospels throughout the world give evidence of the validity of Christian declarations. The eloquence, compelling logic, wit and pungency of Tertullian’s delivery flows in torrents and is renewed in devastating showers throughout his works: “We call ourselves brethren; you also are our brethren by nature, but bad brethren. We are accused of every calamity. Yet we live with you; we avoid no profession, but those of assassins, sorcerers, and the like. You spare the philosophers, though their conduct is less admirable than ours. They confess that our teaching is older than theirs, for nothing is older than truth. The resurrection at which you jeer has many parallels in nature. You think us fools; and we rejoice to suffer for this. We conquer by our death. Inquire into the cause of our constancy. We believe this martyrdom to be the remission of all offences, and that he who is condemned before your tribunal is absolved before God.”
About the year 200, Tertullian assaulted heresy in a brilliant treaties for all time called “Liber de praescriptione haereticorum”, translated as “On the Prescription of Heretics” and his treatise “On Prayer”. Above is an excerpt from that written work.