I stumbled across another one of those “Internet Saint Memes” today that are becoming all too common. So many of them don’t bear any resemblance to reality, and for many I am not able to find attribution at all. Today, however, we got … lucky?
The meme was from St. Evagrius (spelled Evagrios in the Philokalia). The quote attributed to him was about prayer, it was a paraphrase, but after a little digging I found it proper. From Evagrios the Solitary, On Prayer: One Hundred and Fifty-Three Texts he writes:
Often when I have prayed I have asked for what I thought was good, and persisted in my petition, stupidly importuning the will of God, and not leaving it to Him to arrange things as He knows is best for me. But when I have obtained what I asked for, I have been very sorry that I did not ask for the will of God to be done; because the thing turned out not to be as I had thought.
This hits hard. Years into learning to pray — and unlearning much of what I was taught in my Protestant years — and even now, having worked hard at this, I still recognize myself in what Evagrius describes.
Things really came together for me today because I was also listening to Fr. Thomas Hopko’s podcast from Ancient Faith Radio (Jan 9, 2014) entitled Pray for All where he reads the entirety of St. John Chrysostom’s Homily 6 on First Timothy. And Chrysostom has a way of reminding us of things that we might not want to be reminded of:
For this reason God has given us a definite form of prayer, that we might ask for nothing human, nothing worldly.
Of course he is referring to the Lord’s prayer, in which even the bread is not merely physical food (maybe not even physical food at all), but instead the Bread of Life, the Body of Christ, the Eucharist. Even if He did intend for us to pray for physical food, it was for today’s. Not tomorrow’s. Not the next days. And not more than bread.
But how often do we find ourselves praying for worldly things? Maybe even things that could be ‘good’. God heal this person or grant such-and-such to that person – but without knowing the will of God this can start to feel presumptuous.
Chrysostom goes on to say many things that, today in particular, we ought to be terrified about:
The Priest is the common father, as it were, of all the world; it is proper therefore that he should care for all, even as God, Whom he serves. For this reason he says, “I exhort therefore that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men.” From this, two advantages result. First, hatred towards those who are without is done away; for no one can feel hatred towards those for whom he prays: and they again are made better by the prayers that are offered for them, and by losing their ferocious disposition towards us. For nothing is so apt to draw men under teaching, as to love, and be loved. Think what it was for those who persecuted, scourged, banished, and slaughtered the Christians, to hear that those whom they treated so barbarously offered fervent prayers to God for them. Observe how he wishes a Christian to be superior to all ill-treatment. As a father who was struck on the face by a little child which he was carrying, would not lose anything of his affection for it; so we ought not to abate in our good will towards those who are without, even when we are stricken by them.
And later:
Let us learn at last to be Christians! If we know not how to pray, which is a very simple and easy thing, what else shall we know? Let us learn to pray like Christians.
Why is this terrifying? It’s terrifying because I believe that what Chrysostom is saying is that which Jesus said. We must love our enemies and pray for them. I think this is intellectually easy for us to accept. We can do a little “nod” to ourselves in our heads and put a checkmark beside the “prayed for my enemies” box while we said “as we forgive those who trespass against us”.
But I think Chrysostom is calling us out. Unless our love for those enemies is demonstrably reflected in our actions, our prayers are a lie.
For he that curses must be injurious; and injuriousness and prayer are at variance with each other, cursing and praying are far apart
And now, having written all this, I have to go actually do it. God help me. “Let us learn at last to be Christians.”