Chapter 7: OF PRAYERS AND FASTS

OF PRAYERS AND FASTS

We have prayers and fasts, actions nevertheless the most holy and such as are especially proper for Christians, to which our ecclesiastics most diligently exhort their hearers. For true fasting is, as It were, a renouncing of the present life. Which is always subject to evil desires, and a meditation upon the future life that is free from perturbations. Prayer is a lifting up of the mind to God, and such conversation with him that no other thing so greatly inflames man with heavenly affections and more mightily conforms the mind to God's will. But however holy and necessary that exercises be to Christians, yet as one's neighbor is not so much served by them as man is prepared to serve his neighbor with profit, they are not to be preferred to holy doctrine, godly exhortations and admonitions, and other duties whereby our neighbor at once receives profit. Hence we read of the Saviour that in the nighttime he gave himself to prayer, but in the daytime to doctrine and healing the sick. For as love is greater than faith and hope, so we believe that those things which come nearest - viz. such as bring assured profit unto men - are to be preferred above all other holy functions. Hence St. Chrysostom wrote that in the whole company of virtues fasting had the last place.