FOURTH LESSON
On Prayer,
its Necessity and Efficacy.
"Be instant in prayer; watching in it in thanksgiving."—St, Paul, Col, iv. 2.
To pray, my dear children, is to converse with God, speaking to him with your hearts, and not with your lips only. To pray to God, is to forget your own doings, your studies, your games, your amusements, so as to think only of God, who is in heaven. and at the same time near us on earth; and when we are truly convinced that God is there present, that he listens to us, then we tell him our thoughts; we ask him for what we are most in need of, we admire his all-powerfulness, we feel we love him for his great goodness: such is prayer.
Prayer is one of our most important duties; God ordains it us in several places of his Gospel, and our Lord, who surely did not need prayer, nevertheless prayed unceasingly to set us the example of this holy exercise. It would then, first of all, be disobeying God to neglect prayer; and besides it would make is become our own enemies, and you will easily understand why. We are, my children, in continual want of God's help and of his gifts. He alone can preserve the life he gave us, and we should lose it as soon as he would cease to watch over us. He it is who gives growth unto all the fruits of the earth, which become our food. He fills the fountains with water to quench our thirst, and gives the lambs their wool with which warm garments are made for us; every day he removes from our path numberless dangers; and when we arc ill, it is he who blesses the care of those who love us. Who gives the wild flowers power to cure us? It is God Himself and He alone.
Thus, as you see, our bodily wants oblige us to have frequent recourse to prayer, and, on the other hand, the requirements of our souls are none the less numerous, and these latter, my children, are of still greater importance. The soul is of much higher value than the body, for it was created according to God's image, and is immortal. We must then pray above all for our souls. The health and beauty of the soul is in its innocence and righteousness, sin disfigures it in the eyes of God, who detests evil, and nothing but what is pure, saith our Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven. How can man resist his evil propensities which draw him on, he, who is inclined to sin from the very day of his birth. And you, my dear children, young as you are, do you not feel already this sad inclination towards evil, and does it not often happen to you to say: that duty is irksome, obedience very difficult, that you cannot correct yourselves, or alter your temper? Alas! grown people cannot do more than you if left to themselves; but everything is possible by the help of God. This help is called grace, and this grace God never fails to grant to our fervent prayers: "Ask, and thou shalt receive," saith our Lord, and his words are truth itself.
When ought we to pray? Jesus Christ teaches us, my children, to pray incessantly, and I have just shown you how necessary it is for us to do so. Do not be content then, by merely saying punctually your morning and evening prayers, but accustom yourselves to pray now and then in the day-time. You can do it without kneeling down, and without even addressing many words to God. A good thought is a prayer: a good action, well performed duty, temptation withstood, are as so many prayers whose language God understands. And then in the course of a day, how many opportunities there are of uplifting the heart towards God; Now, to thank him for the pleasures he gives us: "O Lord, how good thou art to me!" can you say to him for that. Then it is to beg him to help you when you are tempted to do wrong: "My God," may you then say, "I feel inclined to yield to my vanity, to my laziness, but I still wish only the more fervently to be good; help me!"
Thus it is, my children, that prayer will become familiar and dear to you, and that it will bring down on us those blessings which the Lord is always ready to grant.
When we render this homage to God, the heart must be in accordance with our words, because vocal prayer is the outward expression of the inward feelings of the heart. And we should occasionally during the day pour forth our hearts to God.
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