A HOUSE OF PRAYER

 


SAINT ALBERT THE GREAT, BISHOP, DOCTOR  

Wis 18:14-16,19:6-9; Ps 105:2-3,36-37,42-43; Lk 18:1-8

The House of God is for Prayer

The implication that God made us to be a temple for him is that we are supposed to be a house of prayer. The purpose of being the temple of God is that we may continually offer God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and praise. Our Lord revealed this when he cleansed the Temple of Jerusalem of those who were using it as a marketplace. His words were: “My house is to be a house of prayer for all peoples.” So, God made us that we may be a house of prayer. We are recapitulating these themes that we have already explored in our reflections throughout the week. By default of our creation, prayer ought to be our major preoccupation, for through it we are able to realise the end of our creation. God made us to know him, to love and serve him, in this world; to be happy with him in the eternal communion with him. Prayer is the means to these ends; through prayer, which originates from our faith in God, we acquire knowledge of God through meditation on His word. Praying in union with the Holy Spirit, we are filled with love for God, which motivates our service or worship of God. We are the temple of God for the realisation of the will of God to have an eternal communion with us. The above goal cannot be achieved without making us a temple fit for his eternal glory.

Because sin, actual and original, derails us from God’s will and hinders the intention of God to establish us as His temple, He sent his word to deliver us from the bondage of sin and re-establish our communion with Him. The book of Wisdom presents the deliverance of the Israelites from the Egyptians as a type of Christian deliverance. “When peaceful silence lay over all, and night had run the half of her swift course, down from the heavens, from the royal throne, leapt your all-powerful Word; into the heart of a doomed land the stern warrior leapt. Carrying your unambiguous command like a sharp sword, he stood, and filled the universe with death; he touched the sky, yet trod the earth.” The mission of the word of God is to establish the will of the Father among his own. The divine will is to make us his temple or dwelling place. Hence, the activities of the word of God are directed to the achievement of this for all who believe. He comes to remove every hindrance on the path to true communion with the Father. All those who do not believe, who have turned the house of God into a marketplace, he scatters and dislodges from the house of God. He purifies the faith of those who believe and make their sacrifices continual, purer, and more acceptable to the Father. The psalmist sings of these great works of God. “O sing to him, sing his praise; tell all his wonderful works! Be proud of his holy name, let the hearts that seek the Lord rejoice.”

In the Gospel, our Lord assures us that the Father hears every prayer we offer to him. If God has made us a house of prayer, why would He not hear and answer our prayers? The parable of our Lord teaches that God may sometimes delay, but will certainly answer our prayers. He compared the conduct of God in answering our prayers to that of an unjust judge who acceded to the petition of a poor widow. “Maybe I have neither fear of god nor respect for man, but since she keeps pestering me, I must give this widow her just rights, or she will persist in coming and worry me to death.” It is the intention of God for our prayers to be continual and consistent; therefore, he located his temple and his kingdom within us. We need not travel to pray; we need only turn our gaze from temporal to eternal realities, back and forth, to be in communion with God. Saint Albert the Great mastered this act and made an art of his scientific profession. He excelled in his combination of the temporal and the eternal in his scientific output, such that he is regarded as one of the greatest of philosophers and scientists of the Middle Ages. He was born at Lauingen on the Danube, in Germany, and studied at Padua and Paris before entering the Dominican Order. He taught in a number of places, including the University of Paris, where St. Thomas Aquinas studied under him. He had a great interest in science and astronomy, and his mastery of these gave him the title of the Universal Doctor of the Church. The Pope made him the Bishop of Regensburg in 1260, but he resigned after three years. He died at Cologne in 1280.

Let us pray: O God, who made the Bishop Saint Albert great by his joining of human wisdom to divine faith, grant, we pray, that we may so adhere to the truths he taught, that through progress in learning we may come to a deeper knowledge and love of you. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. 

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