Deeply concealed within each human heart there is a fear of the unknown. When
man is confronted by danger or death, or stands defenseless before the raging
elements, the chill hands of fear grip him. His skill and prudence have proved
of no avail, and he bows before the inevitable. He attempts no longer to oppose
the wave or turn the path of the thunderbolt. But he prays—seeks to approach the
wielder of those terrible powers which he cannot resist, the creator of the
circumstances which seem to overwhelm him.
Prayer is in a manner a natural law of all life an instinctive act of
self-preservation. In this man differs but little from the beast of the forest,
wounded in the chase. Prayer is the clamoring of our heart for the necessities
which alone will satisfy and protect our life's love. Each natural instinct
within us, each appetite, each hunger, is voiced in its own language, whether
in the infant's cry or in the carefully worded arguments of the adult.
There is no need for the Lord in His Word to command men to pray for life bears
in itself a spontaneous prayer. Yet it is to the Lord and to His teachings that
the disciple must turn that he may learn how to pray aright. For the prayers
which pour forth unceasingly from the yearnings of our animal nature are not
the prayers which the Lord enjoins upon us. Our Father who is in secret knows
that we have need of food and drink and clothing and safety. He feeds the fowls
of the air and clothes the lilies of the field. What man must learn from the
Lord is how to pray for those things which the selfish heart does not so
ardently desire.
The beasts of the field do not need to learn to pray. They are led by their
instinct into the fulness of their powers in a transient and brief existence.
But man has been given dominion over all the lower creation. To him it is given
to control his own life and destiny and to balance the various affections of
his earthly nature so that they may serve to produce a variety of forms and
uses, capable of lending perfection to eternal life. His office is spiritual
rather than natural, and his truest and noblest achievements come by
cultivation and free choice. He is made rational by self-discipline and thus
becomes independent of the appetites of his mortal body. Every rational man
feels within him a thirst for knowledge and truth, a hunger for something of
justice and mercy; and for these he strives and labors and supplicates.
But all do not realize that the prayers of man's spirit must not be
self-taught, but taught him by the Lord: that the prayer of our life must be
Divinely sanctioned, if it is to be answered; that we must pray the Lord's own
Prayer! But this He teaches to none other than those who approach Him and say
with the disciple, "Lord, teach us to pray, even as John also taught his
disciples."
At the time of the Lord's advent the air of earth was ringing with prayers,
prayers of grasping Jews and superstitious gentiles, prayers to national
deities, to spirits of dead heroes and to living men, or to abominable idols
whose worship required the blood of children and the dishonor of women. At long petitions
were offered by men whose piety was but a cloak for their lust of power; while
the pagan temples were filled with incantations which threw a spell over the
minds of the simple and bound them under the dark powers of hell.
And therefore the first instruction which the Lord gave had to be of a negative
character. "When thou prayest," He said, "thou shalt not be as
the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the
corners of the streets that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you,
they have their reward. But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the
heathen do; for they think that they shall be heard for their much
speaking." (Matt. 6:5, 7)
These things were said to remove the deep-seated evils and falsities which
pervert the use of prayer into a ritual of self-approbation, a superficial
lip-worship. And in His second advent, the Lord sounds anew these warnings
against a pharisaism which tends to lead men into imaginary heavens. The
Writings inveigh against hypocrisy so strongly that the people of the New
Church have learned to turn away with repugnance from any externals of worship
which seem to savor of what is not genuine; sometimes forgetting that the Lord
does not only condemn the false external but also teaches concerning an
external which is new and true—concerning the need of new garments for new
states, of new bottles for new wine. Thus it is stated in the Heavenly Doctrine
that genuine piety is both acceptable to the Lord and valuable to man, and that
it consists, in part, "in devoting much time to prayer and in behaving
with becoming humility during that time." (HD 124, 128).
It is well known in the Church that Charity (or love to the neighbor from a
love to the Lord) has regard to looking to the Lord and shunning evils as sins,
while acting from justice and with judgment, and doing the goods of use that
belong to one's calling. The degree to which these inner determinations of mind
are present or absent decide the quality of man's spirit. But his spirit cannot
be formed except on the basis of the corresponding externals, for the decisions
of his life while prompted by an inner rational freedom and a choice of
internal attitudes are concerned with the selection of fitting thoughts and
fitting acts. It is in these observable external that the quality of the
internal man is manifested and finds its sincerest expression (HD 173-183).
It is therefore of importance to note that while Charity itself is in the
internal man, "all things of worship are externals of the body and
externals of the mind." (Charity 173). In worship, mind and body are both
employed to express that essence of all charity—that all good and all truth
which man receives through others and does and speaks before others, is from
the Lord alone. The mind falls therefore into a state of conscious humiliation,
a mood of confession and tender gratitude, a desire to meditate and reflect on
spiritual things, an aversion from the evils and the self-seeking which infest
it. The Writings therefore point out that "to glorify God is not a use,
but is a recreation" (SD min. 4773). There is something of spiritual peace
which allows the mind to assume an external state that conforms to the inmost
affections and aspirations of the spirit. The externals of the mind which
habitually cohere and make one with the externals of the body, thus fall into a
form conducive to worship. And this is aided by the very postures and actions
of the body in so far as these express the mood of the mind.
Prayer, whether silent or spoken, whether private or public, is one of these
expressions of man's inner love and inner faith. Even though we may worship in
public, seeking common illustration and common strength, our prayers are
addressed to "our Father who seest in secret"—as if we had entered
our closet and shut the door on the world and the world's opinions. And this
prayer should not be a merely emotional thing with us, but an act of rational
faith. Neither should a false shame of piety—instilled by pride or by
indifference—lead us into a spiritual cowardice.
When we kneel down to pray we seek an audience with God. Prayer—in itself
considered is speech with the Lord. It is not our lips that speak; it is our
affections. If our affections cling to self and to worldly objectives, our
prayer cannot rise above their level, whatever words we use. For the affections
cry with a louder voice, confirming the sense of our words or annulling them,
or even contorting them into an utterly different meaning. If man is in a life
of charity his prayer will be before the Lord continually.
The Lord heareth prayer. He is present with every man; yet not with the evil in
their evils. Therefore He has said, "Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name,
believing, this shall ye receive." To ask "in His name" is to
ask for that which is in accordance with His Divine order. A prayer which
accords with the laws of Providence
will be heard. This we are promised nothing more. We cannot, by our urging,
alter the laws of order or direct the wisdom of God. But so far as we learn
these spiritual laws and learn to love them, so far we have learnt to pray. The
fervent and effectual prayer comes forth when we so dispose our minds as to
surrender our soul into the keeping of the Lord's government, that the pride
born of our ignorance may be broken, and we can acknowledge in charity of
thought that the Lord alone can and will reveal what is good for us and for
others.
Truly the Lord answers every sincere prayer—even if it proceeds from ignorance
or is tainted by human folly. But His answer is according to His own perfect wisdom,
not according to our fragmentary knowledge and dull foresight. He cannot bring
into realization our untamed imaginations. He cannot attend to man's impatient
desire to be saved from the very effort of regeneration; cannot save us from
the pain that comes with the birth-struggle of the new man that must be born
within us. He seldom hearkens to the prayers of those who would be led out of
temptation prematurely—for He will not act in favor of a supplicant and
against the very end-in-view, which is salvation (AC 8179). If He complied with
the wishes of vain hearts, hatred and malice would rule where He now governs
from justice and mercy, and the very substance of the earth would pass away
into dissolution.
But upon prayers that spring from innocence and from wisdom, the Lord adds His
blessing. "If from love and faith man prays for celestial and spiritual
things there is given to him something like a revelation—which is felt as
hope, as consolation, or internal joy." The doctrine likens this to a
revelation. It is sensed as hope and inmost joy: but it contains more than man
can sense. It is a revelation to man's spiritual mind for it effects a certain
"opening of man's interior toward God," and thence an influx into the
perception or thought which gives an inner sense of the essence of the subject
of the prayer (AC 2535). This assurance man can have if he "asks for
nothing but that which contributes to the Lord's kingdom and to himself for
salvation." For an angel of heaven it would be impossible to ask for
anything else; and if he did, he could have no faith that he would receive it.
(AE 815:10)
When man thus prays his mind grasps but the surface import of what he asks of
the Lord. He begs forgiveness for his sins, appeals for guidance and
protection, for strength to resist his evils, he implores for victory in
temptations, and asks for gifts of enlightenment, intelligence, wisdom,
charity. He supplicates for the speedy establishment of the Lord's kingdom. But
to him who prays, all these things have only a vague and general meaning. How
these petitions may be fulfilled is not clearly seen in his conscious thought.
Yet as he prays there is a stirring of a profound affection in the hidden
interiors of his mind. His spirit is affected from within with an ineffable
vision of the heavenly modes whereby his prayer might be answered: ineffable
things of beauty and truth which his conscious mind cannot as yet grasp, but
which are prophetic of the regenerate life. And as he rises from his prayer, he
feels a new strength, a greater resolve, a sense of future victory, as if the
spiritual tasks ahead were after all less heavy than he had thought.
He does not know that his spirit—in the putting away of worldly thoughts—had
actually drawn breath from heaven and had stood in the great audience-hall of
his God and Lord, and had viewed life for the nonce in the new perspective of
eternity. He does not know that the ideas within the words of his prayer had
been unravelled in their fulness and depth of meaning by angelic minds—into a
spiritual invocation of sublime significance, involving the arcana of the
Lord's providence. But he feels their sphere of thoughts as a perception of
consolation and joy.
The angels are in unceasing internal worship, even while in their various uses
of their spiritual occupations. But internal worship alone is not sufficient
for man on earth. "Man," the Arcana states, "ought not to be
otherwise than in external worship also; for by external worship internal
things are excited, and by means of external worship external things are kept
in (a state of) holiness, so that internal things can flow in. And man,
moreover, is thus imbued with knowledges and is prepared for receiving
celestial things, and is also gifted ... unawares with states of holiness ...
which ... are preserved to him by the Lord for the use of eternal life, for in
the other life all the states of his life return." (AC 1618, Char.
173-183).
How great the need of man for these interludes of prayer, whereby our
disordered minds may relapse for a while into a state of holiness—so that the
springs of spiritual life might again be stirred into action—to inflow without
danger of being defiled and distorted by the prudence and the pride of our
worldly self which at other times claims possession of our thoughts! How great
the need of prayer, if through this we may lay up for ourselves treasures in
the kingdom of heaven! For where the treasure is, there will the heart be also.
Yet it is not we that can lay up that heavenly treasure, but the Lord,
unbeknownst to us. And it is not the vain repetitions of the heathen, nor the
prayers of our own fickle will that can call forth the responses of heaven: but
only those petitions which accord with the prayer of the kingdom, the Lord's
prayer, the prayer taught by Him whose is the kingdom and the power and the
glory, forever.
