Sleepy in Our Prayers

Cyprian to the elders and deacons, his brothers: greetings.

I know, dearest brothers, that out of the fear we all owe to God you too are pressing hard, with unbroken petitions and earnest prayers to him. Still, I want to remind your devout concern of this: if we are to appease the Lord and plead with him, we must mourn not with words only, but with fasting and with tears and with every kind of urgency. For we have to see and admit that the wild devastation of this affliction, which has largely wrecked our flock and is wrecking it still, has come upon us because of our sins — because we do not keep the Lord’s way, and do not observe the commands from heaven that were given to us for our salvation. Our Lord did his Father’s will; we do not do our Lord’s will. We are busy about our property and our profit, we chase after our own pride, we hand ourselves over wholly to rivalry and quarreling, we are careless of plain honesty and of faith, we renounce the world with our words and not with our deeds, each of us pleasing himself and displeasing everyone else. So we are struck, and we deserve it, since it is written: “And the servant who knows his master’s will and has not done what he wanted will be beaten with many blows.” [a]

But what blows, what beatings do we not deserve, when even the confessors — who ought to be an example of good living to everyone else — do not keep discipline? While a swollen and shameless boasting about their own confession puffs some of them up too far, torture comes on them: torture with no let-up from the torturer, no end to the sentence, no relief of death. It is torture that does not easily let them through to the crown, but racks them until it makes them give up their faith — unless someone is taken away by God’s mercy and dies in the middle of the torments, winning glory not because the torture stopped but because his death came quickly.

We suffer these things by our own fault and our own deserving, exactly as God’s judgment warned us in advance: “If they abandon my law and do not walk in my judgments, if they profane my statutes and do not keep my commands, then I will punish their offenses with the rod and their wrongdoing with lashes.” That is why we feel the rod and the lashes: because we neither please God by doing good nor make amends for our sins. Let us ask for God’s mercy from deep in our hearts and with our whole minds, because he himself also adds: “Yet I will not scatter my kindness away from them.” Let us ask, and we will receive. And if there is delay and slowness in our receiving, since we have offended so badly, then let us knock — because “to the one who knocks it will also be opened” — as long as it is our prayers, our groaning and our tears that knock at the door. We have to press on with these and keep at them, even when the prayer is already offered with one mind. [d]

There is something more — and it is what urged and compelled me all the more to write you this letter. You ought to know, since the Lord has been good enough to show it and reveal it, that in a vision these words were spoken: “Ask, and you will receive.” Then afterwards the people standing by were told to pray for certain persons who were pointed out to them; but in their petitions the voices clashed and the wills disagreed, and this deeply displeased the one who had said “Ask, and you will receive.” The people’s disagreement was out of harmony. There was no agreement among the brothers, plain and undivided, no united harmony — though it is written, “God, who makes people to be of one mind in a house,” and we read in the Acts of the Apostles, “And the crowd of those who had believed were of one heart and of one soul.” And the Lord has commanded us in his own voice: “This is my command, that you love one another.” And again: “I tell you that if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father who is in heaven.” But if two of one mind can do that much, what could be done if that harmony held among us all? If, in keeping with the peace our Lord gave us, there were agreement among all the brothers, we would long since have obtained from God’s mercy what we are asking for; we would not be left hanging so long in this danger to our salvation and our faith. Yes, truly — these evils would never have come on the brothers at all if the brotherhood had been alive with one spirit. [g]

For it was also shown there that the head of a household was sitting, with a young man seated at his right hand. The young man was troubled and rather sad, with a kind of indignation about him: he held his chin in his right hand and kept his place with a grieving look. But another, standing at the left hand, was carrying a net, and he kept threatening to throw it and catch the people standing around. And when the man who saw this wondered what it could be, he was told that the young man sitting at the right was saddened and grieved because his commands were not being kept, while the one at the left was delighted, because he was being given his chance to receive from the head of the household the power to destroy. [i]

This was shown long before the storm of the present ruin broke. And we have seen what was shown come true: while we despise the Lord’s commands, while we fail to keep the healthy rules of the law he gave us, the enemy was being handed the power to do harm, and with one cast of his net he was sweeping up people who were poorly armed and too careless to fight back.

So let us pray urgently, and groan with unbroken petitions. Understand, dearest brothers, that not long ago I was rebuked for this too in a vision: that we were sleepy in our prayers and did not pray watchfully. And God, who “rebukes those he loves,” certainly rebukes in order to correct, and corrects in order to preserve. So let us strike off the chains of sleep and break away from them, and pray urgently and watchfully, as the apostle Paul tells us: “Keep at your prayer, and stay awake in it.” The apostles too never stopped praying, day or night; and the Lord himself, the teacher of our discipline and the pattern we follow, prayed often and watchfully, as we read in the Gospel: “He went out to a mountain to pray, and spent the whole night in prayer to God.” And what he prayed for, he certainly prayed for on our account, since he was not a sinner but was carrying other people’s sins. He prayed for us in such a way that in another place we read that the Lord said to Peter: “Look, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail.” [j]

If he worked and kept watch and prayed for us and for our sins, how much more ought we to keep at our prayers — first praying to the Lord himself and pleading with him, and then, through him, making amends to God the Father. We have an advocate, someone who pleads for us in our sins, Jesus Christ the Lord and our God — if only we are sorry for the sins already behind us, and confess and admit the sins by which we are offending the Lord now, and undertake for the time ahead to walk in his ways and to fear his commands. The Father corrects us and protects us, if in troubles and in tight places we still stand firm in the faith — that is, if we cling tightly to his Christ, as it is written: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Trouble, or hardship, or persecution, or hunger, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword?” None of these things can separate those who believe; nothing can tear away those who are clinging to his body and his blood. Persecution of this kind is an examination, a searching out of the heart. God wants us sifted and tested, as he has always tested his people; and yet in his testing, help has never once been lacking to those who believe.

Finally, to the very least of his servants — a man set among a great many sins and unworthy of such kindness — he has still been good enough, out of his goodness toward us, to give a command: “Tell him to be free of fear, because peace is coming; but that in the meantime there is a short delay, so that some who are still left may be tested.” And these gracious acts warn us about a plain diet and moderation in drinking as well, so that worldly enticement will not soften a heart now lifted up with strength from heaven, and so that a mind weighed down with too much feasting will not be less watchful for prayer and petition. [m]

It was my duty not to keep these particular things back, or hide them away in my own mind alone — things by which every one of us can be taught and guided. And for your part, do not keep this letter to yourselves; let the brothers have it and read it. To hold back the words the Lord is good enough to warn and teach us with would be the act of a man who wants his brother left unwarned and untaught. Let them know that our Lord is testing us, and let them never let go, in the struggle of this present affliction, of the faith by which we once believed in him. Let each one recognize his own sins, and even now strip off the old self and its way of living. “For no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks behind him is fit for the kingdom of God.” And Lot’s wife, in the end, once she had been rescued, looked back against the command and lost the good of her escape. [n]

Let us look not at the things behind us, where the devil is calling us back, but at the things ahead, where Christ is calling us on. Let us lift our eyes to heaven, so that the earth with its pleasures and its lures does not trick us. And let each of us pray to God not for himself only but for all the brothers, just as the Lord taught us to pray: he did not tell each person to pray privately, but told them, when they prayed, to pray for everyone, in prayer held in common and petition of one mind. If the Lord sees us humble and peaceable; if he sees us joined to one another; if he sees us afraid of his anger; if he sees us corrected and set right by the trouble we are in — then he will keep us safe from the enemy’s attacks. Discipline has come first; pardon will follow.

Only let us never stop asking, and with full faith that we will receive let us beg the Lord in single-hearted harmony, pleading not with groaning only but with tears — as people ought to plead who stand between the ruin of those who are wailing and the remnant of those who are afraid, between the widespread collapse of those who gave way and the small steadiness of those still standing. Let us ask that peace may be restored soon; that we may be helped quickly in our hiding places and our dangers; that the things the Lord is good enough to show his servants may come true — the church restored, our salvation made secure; after the rains, clear weather; after the darkness, light; after the storms and whirlwinds, a quiet calm; the loving help of a father’s love, and the great acts that God’s majesty has always done, by which the blasphemy of the persecutors may be checked, the repentance of those who fell away made new, and the steady faith of those who held on may glory. [o]

I wish you well always, dearest brothers, with all my heart; and remember me. Greet the brotherhood in my name, and remind them to remember me. Farewell.