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On Prayer

Origen, tr. Oulton, 1954

The foregoing has been said on the supposition that even if no other result followed our …

The foregoing has been said on the supposition that even if no other result followed our prayers, we gain the greatest blessings when we understand how to pray as we ought and when we carry this out. And it is clear that he who thus prays will hear “while” he “is yet speaking,”¹ perceiving, by the power of him who “hears in heaven,”²³ the “Here I am,” having cast aside, before he prayed, all dissatisfaction concerning Providence. This is indicated in the words: “If thou take away from thee the yoke, the putting forth of the hand and the word of murmuring.”⁴ He who is well pleased with what happens has been set free from every kind of “yoke,” nor does he “put forth the hand” against God, when he orders what he wills for our training; nor yet again does he “murmur” in his secret thoughts apart from an utterance that men can hear. This murmuring is like that of wicked servants who do not openly cavil at their masters’ orders. Thus do they murmur who do not dare audibly or whole-heartedly to speak evil of Providence for what has happened; they wish as it were to escape the notice even of the Lord of the universe as concerning those things at which they are displeased. I think that this is the point of the words in the Book of Job: “In all these happenings did not Job sin with his lips before God”⁵; it having been written of the previous trial,⁶⁷ “In all these happenings did not Job sin before God.”⁸ That this ought not to occur the saying in Deuteronomy ordains: “Beware that there be not a hidden word in thine heart, a lawless thing, saying, The seventh year is at hand,”⁹ and so forth.

He then that so prays receives such benefit that he is made more capable of union with him who “has filled the world,” even “the Spirit”¹⁰ of the Lord, and with him who has “filled” all “the earth” and “the heaven,” who speaks thus through the prophet: “Do not I fill heaven and earth, saith the Lord?”¹¹ And further, by means of the purification mentioned above,¹² he will participate in the prayer of the Word of God, who stands in the midst even of those who know him not,¹³ and never fails the prayer of anyone, but prays to the Father along with him whose mediator he is. For the Son of God is the “high priest”¹⁴ of our offerings and “an Advocate with the Father,”¹⁵ praying on behalf of those who pray, pleading along with those who plead: nevertheless, he will not pray as on behalf of his own for those who do not pray continually through him, nor will he be “an Advocate with” God as on behalf of his very own for those who do not obey his teachings that one “ought always to pray, and not to faint.”¹⁶ For, it is said, “he spake a parable” that one “ought always to pray, and not to faint. There was in a city a judge,”¹⁷ and so forth. And in a previous passage, “And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight,¹⁸ and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine is come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him.”¹⁹ And, a little further on, “I say unto you, though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.”²⁰ Who is there who believes in the unerring utterance of Jesus, who would not be stirred up to instant prayer by his saying, “Ask and it shall be given you, for everyone that asketh receiveth”²¹? since the “kind Father,”²² when we ask him for “the living bread”²³ (not “the stone”²⁴ which the adversary²⁵ desires for the food of Jesus and his disciples) gives to them who have “received the spirit of adoption” from “the Father”²⁶; and “the Father gives the good gift,”²⁷ “raining it from heaven,”²⁸ to them that ask him.

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