‘Prayer’
Prayer the Church’s banquet, angels’ age,
God’s breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heaven and earth;
Engine against the Almighty, sinner’s tower,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days-world-transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well dressed,
The milky way, the bird of paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood,
The land of spices; something understood.
St Augustine argued that Christians pray for themselves, not for God. God is self-sufficient and doesn’t need anything from his creations. Men and women, on the other hand, need a lot of help getting by in a difficult world, and prayer is a way of finding that aid.
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