On Prayer

Origen, tr. Oulton, 1954

Since, as we said above, he who prays must first be settled and disposed in a certain …

The Introduction to the Prayer in Matthew (Chapters XIX to XXI)

Since, as we said above,¹ he who prays must first be settled and disposed² in a certain manner and then afterwards so pray, let us consider the words that were uttered by the Saviour on this subject before the prayer as it is given in Matthew. They are as follows: “When ye pray, ye shall not be as the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have received their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall recompense thee. And in praying use not vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. After this manner therefore pray ye.”³

Our Saviour in many places clearly ranks vainglory as a deadly passion: as he has done also here, when he deters us from acting at the time of prayer as hypocrites do. For it is to act the hypocrite to wish to pride oneself before men for piety or liberality. Those who remember the saying, “How can ye believe, which receive glory of” men, “and the glory that cometh from the only God ye seek not?”⁴ must despise all glory from men, even though it be reckoned to have been given for a good cause, and must seek the true glory that is properly so-called, which comes from him alone who glorifies him who is worthy of glory in a manner fitting to himself and beyond the deserts of the recipient of glory. And that which would be reckoned as good in itself, and is reckoned to be praiseworthy, is sullied when we do it that we “may have glory of men,”⁵ or “that” we “may be seen of men”⁶: therefore no recompense from God follows us for this. For every word of Jesus is true⁷; and, if one may use a forced expression, is truer, when it is spoken with his accustomed oath.⁸ He says of those who for the sake of vainglory seem to do good to their neighbour or “pray in the synagogues and the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men,” the same thing: “Verily I say unto you, They have received their reward.”⁹¹⁰ The “rich man,” of whom Luke speaks, received as his reward “the good things in”¹¹ his own mortal life, and because he had received these he was no longer able to obtain them after this present life. Similarly, he who “has received” his own “reward,”¹² either for giving something to someone or for his prayers, inasmuch as he did not “sow unto the Spirit,”¹³ but “unto the flesh, shall reap corruption,” but “shall” not “reap eternal life.”¹⁴ Now that man “sows unto the flesh” who “in the synagogues and the streets, that he may have glory of men, doeth alms” with “a trumpet before” him,¹⁵ or he who “loves to stand and pray in the synagogues and corners of the streets, that” he “may be seen of men”¹⁶ and be reckoned as pious and holy by those who see him.

Moreover, everyone who travels along “the wide and broad way that leadeth to destruction,”¹⁷ which has nothing clear or straight but is altogether full of twists and corners (for its straightness has been very much broken into curves), stands in it¹⁸ not otherwise than he¹⁹ who “prays in the corners of the streets,”²⁰ through love of pleasure frequenting not one but several streets, where are to be found those who are “dying like men”²¹ because they have fallen from their deity:²² who praise and count happy those in the streets who are wont to commit iniquity in their company. And at all times there are many who in their praying are manifestly “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,”²³ in the midst of banquets and at carousals behaving drunkenly in prayer, truly “standing in the corners of the streets” and “praying.”²⁴ For everyone who lives according to pleasure, having loved “the broad” path, has fallen from “the narrow and straitened way”²⁵ of Jesus Christ—a way with not the slightest bend and absolutely no corners at all.

Notes

VIII, 2–X, 2.
XIX, 1. must first be settled and disposed, etc.] Cf. VIII, 2–X, 2. It is not surprising that Origen, as a master of the spiritual life, lays stress on this; but it is characteristic of him that he seeks for and cites Scriptural support for his view.
Matt. 6:5–9.
John 5:44.
Matt. 6:2.
Matt. 6:5.
ἀψευδὴς.
XIX, 2. his accustomed oath] A heightened description of the formula “Verily, I say unto you,” which occurs some seventy times in the Gospels.
Matt. 6:2, 5.
XIX, 2. “They have received their reward”] The verb used in Matt. 6:2, 5, is ἀπέχουσι, which means, in the light of its usage in papyri, “they have given their receipt”—and therefore cannot claim anything further in that respect.
Luke 16:19, 25.
Matt. 6:2, 5.
XIX, 2. he did not “sow unto the Spirit”] The passage in Gal. 6:6–10 has much in it about doing good to others, and its reward. And this suggests to Origen its co-ordination with the passage in Matt. ch. 6, referred to in the previous note.
Gal. 6:8.
Matt. 6:2.
Matt. 6:5.
Matt. 7:13.
XIX, 3. stands in it, etc.] The text followed is that as emended by Koetschau (“if any alteration is necessary”), except that he takes “through love of pleasure” with the preceding clause. T has: “stands in it not well, praying in the corners of the streets, through love of pleasure frequenting not one but several streets.” Bentley conjectured: “stands in it, praying not otherwise in the corners of the streets than through love of pleasure frequenting,” etc. The Anonymous conjectured: “in which he stands not well who prays in the corners of the streets through love of pleasure,” etc. At the background of these references to “twists” and “corners” and “not one but several streets” is the Greek idea, to which Origen gives expression in XXI, 2, that virtue is one, vice is many.
See note.
Matt. 6:5.
Ps. 82:7.
XIX, 3. fallen from their deity] In contra Celsum, III, 37, Origen says that Christians through the only-begotten God the Word “partake of deity”; and in De Orat., XXIII, 5, he speaks of those “to whom appertains a certain divine glory and power and—so to speak—an effluence of his deity.” Again, in XXIV, 4, we read, “when a man partaking of an effluence of deity exalts that very power of God of which he has partaken.” See also IX, 2, and XXV, 2.
II Tim. 3:4.
Matt. 6:5.
Matt. 7:13, 14.