Ryan Jenkins, MDiv '22, delivered the following remarks at Morning Prayers in Harvard's Memorial Church on February 3, 2022.
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A reading from Chapters on Prayer by Evagrius Ponticus, chapters 35 to 41. Prayer is an ascent of the spirit to God. Do you long to pray? Renounce all things. You then will become heir to all. First of all, pray to be purified from your passions. Secondly, pray to be delivered from ignorance. Thirdly, pray to be freed from all temptation and abandonment. In your prayer, seek only justice and the kingdom of God. That is to say, after virtue and true spiritual knowledge. Then all else will be given to you besides. It is a part of justice that you should pray not only for your own purification, but also for that of every man. In doing this, you will imitate the practice of the angels. Observe whether you truly stand before God in your prayer, or whether you are under some compulsion that drives you to seek recognition from men, striving in this manner after their approval. When indulged to this end, your protracted prayer is nothing better than a pretext where you pray along with the brethren or alone. Strive to make your prayer more than a mere habit. Make it a true inner experience.
Does God really hear our prayers? Does God care what we pray for, or just that we do pray? Does God even care that we pray? If Jesus already gave us the words to pray, why would I try to make up my own? These are just a few questions that often come up for me. I read Evagrius in search of some answers about prayer. Evagrius was a monk who lived in the Egyptian desert in a late fourth century, giving up a life of power and prestige as an arch deacon in Constantinople. In Evagrius' "Chapters on Prayer", he gives 153 short chapters that give a clue as to what prayer meant to him. We read only seven of these chapters together this morning.
While these chapters have more to offer than I can cover in this short reflection, I'll just highlight three lessons that stood out to me. One, we should seek justice in our prayer. Two, we should pray not just for ourselves, but for each other. And three, we should strive for prayer to be a true inner experience, not just a habit. To expand on these, we should be honest in prayer with both ourselves and with God. No matter if we're reciting something for the millionth time, or expressing something for the first time, we can bring to God our honest thoughts, concerns, and questions. And through this prayer, we should seek not just to transform ourselves, but to prepare ourselves to advance justice in the world.
In conclusion, prayer can be a lot of things. It can be a recitation of the words that Jesus gave. It can be a dialogue with God. It can be a chant, a song, or a meditation. Prayer can happen when we think about our friends and family and wish them well, and prayer can even be a short conversation with a stranger. Evagrius says that prayer is an ascent of the spirit to God. That's an expansive category. Rather than try to define, label, or conform prayer to some ideal, I think that I'll instead open myself up for encounter with new ways to pray. And in the meantime, I'll keep practicing what I already know.
Let us pray. Dear God, help us to pray, not just for ourselves, but for one another. Help us to deepen our prayer lives through new forms we haven't yet learned, and old forms we haven't yet forgotten. Help us to pray, not just for internal change, but to use our prayer as nourishment as we seek external change, as well. In the name of the Father, and of the son, and the holy spirit, amen. And together, let us pray the words that Jesus taught us. Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not in temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory. Amen.