There is nothing in all man’s life, well beloved in our Saviour Christ, so needful to be spoken of, and daily to be called upon, as hearty, zealous, and devout prayer; the necessity whereof is so great, that without it nothing may be well obtained at God’s hand
“A
homily or sermon concerning prayer”, Second
Book of Homilies
God’s
breath in man returning to his birth
George Herbert
Prayer is, it is not too bold to
say, a human universal. Human beings at all times and in all places (if not
every individual) have called out to the divine being or beings – whether for
help or protection or to praise or to give thanks, or to call down curses on an
enemy’s head. At one level this makes prayer not so very interesting, since it
is so ubiquitous. The similarities between the forms of prayer are far less
significant than the differences. Christian prayer claims not simply to be
another form of prayer but to be indicative of a quite specifically defined
relationship to the divine being, who it calls on as ‘Father’. As we have seen
already, the Christian approaches God only on the basis of God’s prior
approach. Thus, like the other aspects of Christian worship, prayer is
fundamentally a response to who God reveals himself to be.
The theological transformation
heralded at the Reformation was, as we have also seen, a transformation of
Christian piety in all its forms. This was no less evident in the matter of
prayer than anywhere else. Though perhaps prayer as a subject attracted less
controversy than other aspects of Christian corporate worship, it was still the
case that a very significant reconstitution of the nature and meaning of prayer
was being undertaken. It doesn’t take much reflection to understand why this is
so. What prayer is in essence is very much determined by to whom it is that one
is praying. If, with Luther, the evangelicals of the Reformation discovered
afresh the grace and mercy of God in combination with (and not in tension with)
his righteousness, then it makes sense to expect from them a new understanding
of what prayer is and what prayer does.
The English Reformers, like their
European counterparts, were keen to provide in their freshly minted orders of
service a school for prayer in the vernacular tongue. The Book of Common Prayer was a repository not only of congregational
prayers but of prayers that could be learnt and repeated by any congregation
member. The Reformers took great care, as we shall see, to reflect in their
composition of prayers for the people the theology of divine grace mediated
only in Christ – and the proper human response - that they had so lately
learnt. They were responding to the division of labour so characteristic of the
medieval church, in which the monasteries provided a specialized – and amply
funded – service of praying. Now, prayer was the privileged task of every believer.
In this chapter I shall seek to
outline, from the three homilies on prayer that appeared in 1563, a Reformation
Anglican approach to prayer. We shall from these homilies note that prayer was
not simply those prayers authorized for use in common worship. The Reformers
were adamant that prayer was a basic property of the Christian life for every
believer. Next, by means of an examination of some of the prayers in The Book of Common Prayer itself, we
shall see how Cranmer and others put into practice their convictions about
prayer in the light of the theology of grace.
I
Prayer in medieval Christianity
In medieval Christianity, there had
developed a veritable industry of prayer. We have already seen how, in the
chantry houses of Europe, the monastic movement made the business of prayer
their very own. The demands of a daily life of prayer were too onerous for the
everyday Christian. The monks, friars, nuns and other religious functionaries
took the burden on themselves on behalf of the rest of the social order. As a
result, they lived apart, sequestered from the everyday concerns of family
life, political life and economic life.
What was this prayer for? Those who prayed had a job to do to
plead with God on behalf of society for its protection and its wellbeing. They
prayed against the uncertainties of human life – against plague and pestilence,
famine and misfortune. They prayed not simply to God but also sought the help
of the host of saints, and of the Virgin Mary. Luther himself spoke of calling
out to St Anne in the midst of a mighty storm in which he was caught sometime
in his youth.
It was not an expected part of an
ordinary Christian’s spiritual life that they should pray in the sense that we
become familiar with in the Reformation era. Church services were not in the
vernacular, and so their participation in the prayers offered in church were
not at the level of the understanding. However, there was even prior to the
Reformation a widespread dissatisfaction with this prayerlessness amongst the
laity, and a number of lay spiritual movements sprang up reflecting this hunger
for something more spiritually authentic.
The “Devotio Moderna” was one of
these, arising in the Netherlands at the end of the fourteenth century.
Dissatisfied with the state of the church and the absence of piety among the
clergy, Dutch scholar Geert Groote preached for a return to a simple and pious
way of life saturated with meditation and prayer. The communities of lay people
that sprang up as a result of his teachings became known as ‘The Brethren of
the Common Life’. These communities consisted mainly of laymen who did not take
vows.
They did however devote themselves
to Scripture and prayer and to looking after the poor. Their influence should
not be underestimated, since Erasmus and Luther both had degrees of contact
with their teachings; and perhaps the most influential work of medieval piety,
Thomas a Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ composed
in the fifteenth century, was a
product of this new turn in piety.
The piety of The Imitation of Christ links an intense inwardness to a life of
quiet and humble good works – as far as possible removed from the world. a
Kempis emphasizes silence and solitude as the necessary contexts for the life
modeled after Christ. The life of intense meditation is the pathway to the
heavenly throne, and the study of the life of Christ is necessary so as to
inculcate those virtues that the Christian requires. As he writes, “grace will
always be given to the truly grateful, and what is given to the humble is taken
away from the proud.” Note here that gratefulness is the trigger for the divine
gift of grace, and not simply a response to it. Prayer is a movement of the
individual soul towards God in devotion.
Thus, even while there was a surge
in lay piety in the latter middle ages, it modeled itself on the piety of
monasticism. Prayer in the “Devotio Moderna” was still a matter of seeking to
meet God on terms that pleased him; of impressing upon God the humility and the
devotion of the individual soul. There was, as Roman Catholic theologian Hans
Urs von Balthasar was later to point out, no cross in this Christianity: “There
is no mention of the mediation of the God-man, of access through Christ, in the
Holy Spirit, to the Father” (in The Glory
of the Lord). Jesus is to be imitated, but strangely, imitated by a
withdrawal from the world which he himself never modeled. And prayer is made
possible through or on account of his work but almost in denial of it.
II
Prayer in the homilies
The theology of prayer that we
encounter in the series of sermons on prayer from the Second
book of homilies (1563), probably
penned by Bishop John Jewel of Salisbury, is of an entirely different order. It
is no less zealous for the Christian practice of prayer. It is no less the case
in this account of Christian piety that prayer should take place with
regularity and be marked by discipline. But prayer serves an altogether
different purpose in the Christian life, since it does not in and of itself
draw the believer closer to God.
The first homily on prayer, “An
homily or sermon concerning prayer”, falls into three parts. In the first of
these parts, Jewel points out that even though God knows our needs even before
we ask him, prayer is still a great benefit to us. Our prayers do not surprise
God, but they are God’s ordained means for strengthening our faith in him:
“there is nothing more expedient or needful for mankind in all the world than
prayer” (p. 321). The purpose of prayer is that we might indeed learn
thankfulness:
…to
the intent we might acknowledge him to be the Giver of all good things, and
behave ourselves thankfully towards him in that behalf, loving, fearing, and
worshipping him sincerely and truly, as we ought to do, he hath profitably and
wisely ordained that in time of necessity we should humble ourselves in his
sight, pour out the secrets of our heart before him, and crave help at his
hands, with continual, earnest, and devout prayer. (p. 321)
In the second part of the homily, the
emphasis turns to the God to whom the Christian prays. It is useless to turn to
God in our moment of need if God is unable to help us. But he is certainly not
unable. And furthermore, he is willing to help, able to hear our prayers and –
even better – knows what we need even better than we do. These divine qualities
make him the sole worthy recipient of our prayers. Indeed, it is faith which
directs our prayers, and if faith be in any other than the God who is powerful,
knowledgeable and generous, then we blaspheme him. If prayer is, as Augustine
says, a lifting up of the mind to God – more an inward disposition of the heart
as it is a form of words on the lips – then we have no business, and no comfort
in, praying to someone who cannot truly know our mind, or our heart.
The critique of the medieval system
of prayers to the saints is scarcely veiled here. But this is not simply a
polemical point. It is a corollary of the Reformation theology of justification
by faith in Christ alone: “Christ is our only mediator and intercessor with God
and…we must seek and run to no other”. In Christ we perceive that God is not
dangerous or unpredictable, judge of all though he is. He is, rather, merciful
and just, and “nigh unto them that call upon him in faith and truth”. We espy
in Jesus Christ God’s compassionate love, and his call to seek him. A person’s
sins are not an obstacle to prayer – not because God overlooks these sins, but
because in Christ atonement is made for them. Taking up the Christology of the
Epistle to the Hebrews, the homily emphasizes Christ’s ongoing role as our
mediator by dint of his everlasting priesthood. Our access to the Father, to
whom we pray, is sufficiently and completely obtained by Jesus Christ. And this
is the grounds for the Christian confidence that we are heard when we pray: not
because we have abjected ourselves, or because we have found the right formula
of words, or because we have thanked him finally enough. All that is needed has
been done for us.
For what ought the Christian pray?
The third part of the homily urges the Christian to pray to God wisely,
remembering that we pray to the “heavenly King, who is only delighted with
justice and equity”. The Christian should pray for his or her own spiritual and
physical wellbeing. The needs of the soul should be remembered at a higher
priority than those of the body – since these are ultimately of greater
importance. Seeking the honour and glory of God, and not our own, is the key to
making our petitions, however. Love (as Gerald Bray notes) is the key: “Whomsoever
we are bound by express commandment to love, for those also we are bound in
conscience to pray”. Prayer expresses love; and the love of God knows no
bounds. Therefore, prayers should be offered for kings and rulers, for
ministers, for fellow Christians and for those not Christian – indeed for all
people on the earth.
Just as the Christian is not to
pray to the saints, so he or she is not to pray for the dead. There is no
commandment in the Bible to do so; and furthermore, the homily argues (in
keeping with Reformation orthodoxy on this matter) that the judgment of God is
final post mortem. Purgatory is held
to be a fiction, and a disastrous one at that, since it undermines the cross of
Christ as the only sure mediation between God and human beings. And the idea
that our prayers could in some sense speed the soul’s passage through purgatory
is disastrous, since (once again) it implies that the cross is insufficient for
the purpose. The cross of Christ is “that purgatory wherein all Christian men
must put their whole trust and confidence, nothing doubting but, if they truly
repent them of their sins, and die in perfect faith, that then they shall
forthwith pass from death to life.” If that be not enough, no prayers of human
beings shall release a soul from purgatory.
No comments:
Post a Comment