{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-1591","native_reference":{"book_number":590,"chapter_from":5,"chapter_to":5,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":17,"verse_to":17},"public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"verse-keyed-module-record","review_required":["English edition and exact text","author/work attribution","dating","verse mapping and citation kind","reuse and attribution","split author quotations and deduplicate"],"review_status":"unreviewed","source_html":"<p><b>Augustine of Hippo</b>: And who observed and noticed the cause of his groaning? \"All my desire is before Thee.\" For it is not before men who cannot see the heart, but it is before Thee that all my desire is open! Let your desire be before Him; and \"the Father, who seeth in secret, shall reward thee.\" For it is thy heart's desire that is thy prayer; and if thy desire continues uninterrupted, thy prayer continueth also. For not without a meaning did the Apostle say, \"Pray without ceasing.\" Are we to be \"without ceasing\" bending the knee, prostrating the body, or lifting up our hands, that he says, \"Pray without ceasing\"? Or if it is in this sense that we say that we \"pray,\" this, I believe, we cannot do \"without ceasing.\" There is another inward kind of prayer without ceasing, which is the desire of the heart. Whatever else you are doing, if you do but long for that Sabbath, you do not cease to pray. If you would never cease to pray, never cease to long after it. The continuance of thy longing is the continuance of thy prayer.<br/><i>— COMMENTARY ON THE Psalms 37.14</i></p><p><b>Basil of Caesarea</b>: For prayer and psalmody, however, as also, indeed, for some other duties, every hour is suitable, that, while our hands are busy at their tasks, we may praise God sometimes with the tongue (when this is possible, or, rather, when it is conducive to edification); or, if not, with the heart.… Thus we acquire a recollected spirit—when in every action we beg from God the success of our labors and satisfy our debt of gratitude to him who gave us the power to do the work, and when, as has been said, we keep before our minds the aim of pleasing him. If this is not the case, how can there be consistency in the words of the apostle bidding us to \"pray without ceasing,\" with those other words, \"we worked night and day.\"<br/><i>— THE LONG RULES Q37. R.</i></p><p><b>Desert Fathers</b>: Bishop Epiphanius of Cyprus, of holy memory, was told this by the abbot of his monastery in Palestine. 'By your prayers we have kept our rule; we carefully observe the offices of terce, sext, none and vespers.' But Epiphanius rebuked him and said, 'Then you are failing to pray at other times. The true monk ought to pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17). He should always be singing psalms in his heart.'<br/><i>— The Desert Fathers, Sayings of the Early Christian Monks</i></p><p><b>Desert Fathers</b>: Some monks called Euchites, or 'men of prayer', once came to Lucius in the ninth region of Alexandria. He asked them, 'What manual work do you do?' They said, 'We do not work with our hands. We obey St Paul's command and pray without ceasing' (1 Thess. 5:17). He said to them, 'Don't you eat?' They said, 'Yes, we do.' He said to them: 'When you are eating who prays for you?' Then he asked them, 'Don't you sleep?' They said, 'Yes, we do.' He said, 'Who prays for you while you are asleep?' and they could not answer him. Then he said to them, 'I may be wrong, brothers, but it seems to me that you don't do what you say. I will show you how I pray without ceasing although I work with my hands. With God's help, I sit down with a few palm leaves, and plait them, and say, 'Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great mercy: and according to the multitude of thy mercies do away with mine iniquity' (Ps. 51:1). He asked them, 'Is that prayer, or not?' They said, 'It's prayer all right.' He said, 'When I spend all day working and praying in my heart, I make about sixteen pence. Two of these I put outside the door, and with the rest I buy food. Whoever finds the two pennies outside the door prays for me while I am eating and sleeping: and so by God's grace I fulfil the text, \"Pray without ceasing\" (1 Thess. 5:17).'<br/><i>— The Desert Fathers, Sayings of the Early Christian Monks</i></p><p><b>Desert Fathers</b>: A brother asked one of the hermits, 'If I happen to over-sleep, and am late for the hour of prayer, I am ashamed that others will hear me praying so late, and so I become reluctant to keep the rule of prayer.' He said, 'If ever you oversleep in the morning, get up when you wake, shut the door and the windows, and say your psalms. For it is written, \"The day is thine and the night is thine\" (Ps. 74:16). God is glorified whatever time it is.'<br/><i>— The Desert Fathers, Sayings of the Early Christian Monks</i></p><p><b>Desert Fathers</b>: The brothers told this story: We once visited some hermits, and after the usual prayer we exchanged greetings and sat down. After we had talked with them, we got ready to go, and asked once again for prayers to be said. But one of the hermits said to us, 'What, haven't you prayed already?' We said: 'Yes, abba, when we came in, we prayed, and since then we have been talking.' He said, 'I may be wrong, brothers; but one of you, while he was sitting and talking with you, offered a hundred and three prayers.' With these words he prayed, and sent us away.<br/><i>— The Desert Fathers, Sayings of the Early Christian Monks</i></p><p><b>Ignatius of Antioch</b>: Having obtained good proof that thy mind is fixed in God as upon an immoveable rock, I loudly glorify [His name] that I have been thought worthy [to behold] thy blameless face, which may I ever enjoy in God! I entreat thee, by the grace with which thou art clothed, to press forward in thy course, and to exhort all that they may be saved. Maintain thy position with all care, both in the flesh and spirit. Have a regard to preserve unity, than which nothing is better. Bear with all, even as the Lord does with thee. Support all in love, as also thou doest. Give thyself to prayer without ceasing. Implore additional understanding to what thou already hast. Be watchful, possessing a sleepless spirit. Speak to every man separately, as God enables thee. Bear the infirmities of all, as being a perfect athlete [in the Christian life]: where the labour is great, the gain is all the more.<br/><i>— Epistle of Ignatius to Polycarp</i></p><p><b>Jerome</b>: 'And meditates on his law day and night.' [Psalms 1:2] The psalmist has already mentioned three things one must not do: follow the Counsel of the wicked; stand in the way of sinners; sit in the company of the insolent. These three things we must not do, but there are also two things that we must do, for it will not be sufficient for us to shun evil unless we seek good. 'But delights in the law of the Lord.' The psalm does not say fears the law, but delights in the law. There are many who observe the law through fear, but fear as a motive for action is far from meritorious. 'But delights in the law of the Lord' - wholeheartedly he obeys the Lord's command.</p><p>'And meditates on his law day and night.' Mere words cannot express adequately what the mind conceives. 'But delights in the law of the Lord.' Some one may say: 'Look, I want to obey the law of God, and so because I want to obey, I am happy.' But consider the words that follow. It is not enough to want the law of God, but one must meditate on His law day and night. 'Meditate day and night.' Someone else may object: 'This is too much for human nature to endure, for one must walk, and drink, and eat, and sleep, and perform all the other necessities of life. How, then, meditate on the law of God day and night, and especially since the Apostle says: \"Pray without ceasing\"? [1 Thessalonians 5:17] How can I be praying during the time that I am sleeping?'</p><p>Meditation on the law does not consist in reading, but in doing, just as the Apostle says in another place: 'Whether you eat or drink, or do anything else, do all for the glory of God. [1 Cor. 10:31] Even if I merely stretch forth my hand in alms giving, I am meditating on the law of God; if I visit the sick, my feet are meditating on the law of God; if I do what is prescribed, I am praying with my whole body what others are praying with their lips. The Jews, indeed, prayed with their lips, but our prayer is works.<br/><i>— Homily 1, on Psalms 1</i></p><p><b>John Cassian</b>: When the mind is freed from lust, established in tranquility and does not waver in its intention toward the one supreme good, the monk will fulfill the precept of St. Paul, \"Pray without ceasing,\" and \"In every place lifting up holy hands without wrath and controversy.\" By purity of heart the mind is drawn away from earthly feelings and is reformed in the likeness of an angelic spirit. Then, whatever thought the mind receives, whatever it considers, whatever it does, will be a prayer of true purity and sincerity.<br/><i>— CONFERENCES 9.6</i></p><p><b>John Chrysostom</b>: \"Pray without ceasing; In every thing giving thanks: for this is the will of God.\"</p><p>Always to give thanks, this is a mark of a philosophic soul. Hast thou suffered any evil? But if thou wilt, it is no evil. Give thanks to God, and the evil is changed into good. Say thou also as Job said, \"Blessed be the name of the Lord for ever.\" (Job i. 21) For tell me, what such great thing hast thou suffered? Has disease befallen thee? Yet it is nothing strange. For our body is mortal, and liable to suffer. Has a want of possessions overtaken thee? But these also are things to be acquired, and again to be lost, and that abide here. But is it plots and false accusations of enemies? But it is not we that are injured by these, but they who are the authors of them. \"For the soul,\" he says, \"that sinneth, itself shall also die.\" (Ezek. xviii. 4) And he has not sinned who suffers the evil, but he who has done the evil.<br/><i>— Homily on 1 Thessalonians 10</i></p><p><b>John of Dalyatha</b>: Why did Paul say, \"Pray and do not grow weary\"? As long as he is a servant, he indeed prays; but once born of the Spirit in the world of prayer, he is a son of God, and he has authority over riches, being an heir; thus he does not merely ask.<br/><i>— LETTERS 5.6</i></p><p><b>Tertullian</b>: Touching times of prayer nothing at all has been prescribed, except clearly \"to pray at every time and every place.\"<br/><i>— On Prayer</i></p><p><b>Tertullian</b>: Further: since in the self-same commentary of Luke the third hour is demonstrated as an hour of prayer, about which hour it was that they who had received the initiatory gift of the Holy Spirit were held for drunkards; and the sixth, at which Peter went up on the roof; and the ninth, at which they entered the temple: why should we not understand that, with absolutely perfect indifference, we must pray always, and everywhere, and at every time; yet still that these three hours, as being more marked in things human-(hours) which divide the day, which distinguish businesses, which re-echo in the public ear-have likewise ever been of special solemnity in divine prayers? A persuasion which is sanctioned also by the corroborative fact of Daniel praying thrice in the day; of course, through exception of certain stated hours, no other, moreover, than the more marked and subsequently apostolic (hours)-the third, the sixth, the ninth.<br/><i>— On Fasting</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"7d43ecff51fb1ee0fbb11cc8d0d4880a9f3377e55edb6b8d82d0bbed1a7d0330","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":1591,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"8088a044939076495546f875851a47cc7e538686c3ff7611be9d397dae3ba989","translator":null,"work":null}