7N. Prayer from Origen and Polycarp

One of the best examples of teaching on prayer comes from Origen (ca 60 - 155 AD.) It was written at Caesarea as part of "The Apostolic Fathers" about the year A.D. 236. This short summary of one part of this book keeps as closely as possible to his own words:

How to Pray

"How to pray: Settle your mind. Put yourself in God's presence and act as though God was there, looking at you. Then you will hear the Lord's reply. "Here I am" (Isaiah 58.9).

"This is the greatest answer to prayer, to know the presence of God. You do not pray alone. Christ prays with you, and the angels, who rejoice over one sinner who turns to God, pray with you."(2)

"When to pray: You are told to pray always, because the good life is a prayer. Prayer, in the ordinary sense, should be at least three times each day (Daniel 6.10): morning (Psalm 5.3), noon (Acts 10.9), and evening (Psalm 141.2). Stand, kneel, or sit? The best position is to stand, with hands held out, and eyes looking up, even as you want to lift up your soul, and raise your mind to God. Kneeling is right, when you are asking God's forgiveness. But you may pray sitting, e.g. if your feet ache; or even lying down, if you have a fever. Sometimes, e.g. at sea, or in a crowd, you must not bother about position at all."(2)

Place of prayer

"Place of prayer: Any place can be the right place. A place becomes the right place when you pray in it. In your own home, choose a quiet place, clean and good, which can be made your holy place. There is one place where we most expect the presence of angels, the power of the Lord himself, the spirits of holy men - both those still living and those passed on. I mean the place where the congregation and the faithful meet."(2) Hippolytus instructs people living an home to pray upon rising, at the third, sixth, and ninth hours, before going to bed, and even at midnight. On days when there is no common meeting for religious instruction, the faithful are to read a "holy book" at home. With the rise of Christian art, new domestic forms arose for expressing faith: amulets, religious symbols, and clothing with illustrated Gospel stories began to develop;

"They appear like painted walls ... In doing this they consider themselves to be religious and to be wearing clothes that are agreeable to God."(7)

Irenaeus' Advice

We may add some words of Irenaeus. He was Bishop of Lyons in Gaul (now France) from A.D.177 to 200, and wrote about the preaching of an aged Bishop, Polycarp, in the house church at Smyrna. Irenaeus in his boyhood had heard Polycarp preach, and this preaching made a lasting impression upon him:

"Lessons received as a boy, make an impression which becomes part of the mind, and the impression remains, growing as the mind grows. So I can tell the very place where the blessed Polycarp, sitting down, used to preach; his comings out and goings in; his bodily appearance; and the talks which he used to make for the congregation. He used to talk of his going about with John, and with the others who had seen the Lord, about their sayings, this and that which he had heard from them about the Lord, about his mighty acts and his teaching. And because Polycarp had received it from eyewitnesses of the Word of life, Polycarp used to tell everything just as it is in the Scriptures. Even then, the mercy of God was upon me, and I used to listen eagerly, noting these things, not on paper, but in my heart."(2)

Questions for Discussion

1. What can we learn from the New Testament Christians about prayer?

2. What are the modern equivalents to the Christian art mentioned by Hippolytus?

Bibliography

"You are fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household." Ephesians 2.19

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