Annotation XXIX

”But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy chamber,” etc. — Matthew 6:6

On vocal prayer.

Chrysostom, homily 19 on Matthew, brought forward, toward the exposition of this passage, certain things concerning vocal prayer, which the heretics of our times abuse against the prayers and supplications which are wont to be publicly read or chanted by priests in the churches of the Christians. But the very course of Chrysostom’s words plainly proves that he does not condemn the vocal and public prayers of the Church — to which he exhorts the people in almost all his sermons — but that he speaks against certain vain and foolish show-offs, who preferred vocal prayer to spiritual, and on that account prayed in the church with disordered, immoderate, and unseemly gestures and shoutings, so as to be more conspicuously marked off from the rest — not without the admiration of the onlookers. These men Chrysostom, recalling them from ostentation and immodesty to modesty and humility, [addresses thus]: “Let us, therefore, render the vows of our prayers not by gestures of the body, nor by clamors of the voice, but by the best intention of the will — not with the sound of the mouth and its noise, not for such importunate ostentation and boasting, but with all modesty,” etc.