Luke 5:16

The sick of the palsy is healed, and that in public, in the sight of the people.

Not by words alone, but also by deeds has God taught us to pray. He himself prayed frequently and demonstrated what we ought to do by the testimony of his own example. As it is written: "But he himself was in retirement in the desert, and in prayer," and again, "He went out into the mountain to pray and continued all night in prayer to God." But if he who was without sin prayed, how much more ought sinners to pray, and if he prayed continually, watching through the whole night with uninterrupted petitions, how much more ought we to lie awake at night in continuing prayer!

(26.) And His works He indeed performed among the people, but He prayed for the most part in the wilderness, sanctioning the liberty of resting a while from labour to hold converse with God with a pure heart. For He needed no change or retirement, since there was nothing which could be relaxed in Him, nor any place in which He might confine Himself, for He was God, but it was that we might clearly know that there is a time for action, a time for each higher occupation.

(Mor. xxviii. c. 13.) Our Redeemer performs His miracles by day, and passes the night in prayer, as it follows, And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed, hinting, as it were, to perfect preachers, that as neither they should entirely desert the active life from love of contemplation, so neither should they despise the joys of contemplation from an excess of activity, but in silent thought imbibe that which they might afterwards give back in words to their neighbours.

He himself would withdraw to the desert and pray. Do not attribute his withdrawal to pray to the nature that says, "I will, be cleansed," and healed from infirmities, but to the nature that stretched out its hand and touched the leper: not that, according to Nestorius, there are two persons of the Son, but that the same person has two natures and thus also two operations. Alternatively: because he performs miracles in the city but spends the night praying in the desert or the mountain (as it is later read), he offers to us examples of both lives, the active and the contemplative, so that no one, engrossed in contemplation, neglects the care of his neighbors, nor someone overly bound by the care of his neighbors abandons the pursuit of contemplation: so that neither the love of neighbor impedes the love of God, nor the love of God, which transcends, rejects the love of neighbor. For to pray on the mountain is, having forsaken the cares of weak thoughts, for anyone to hasten with the whole mind to the eternal joys of highest contemplation. To withdraw to the desert and pray is to suppress the rising internal clamor of earthly desires, and to seek a certain secret place with the Lord within oneself, where, with external tumult ceasing, one silently speaks to him through inner desires.

Now that He retired to pray, you would not ascribe to that nature which says, I will, be thou clean, but to that which putting forth the hand touched the leprous man, not that according to Nestorius there is a double person of the Son, but of the same person, as there are two natures, so are there two operations.

Lastly it is shown to be virtuous, when it is added: But he himself withdrew into the desert and prayed: because he was not seeking human glory and fame, but was fleeing it, according to that passage in Matthew fourteen: "And having dismissed the crowd, he went up onto the mountain alone to pray." In this he was giving us a model of withdrawing from the world and drawing near to God: on account of which the Apostle said in Galatians one: "If I were still pleasing men, I would not be a servant of Christ." And therefore, for prayer to be pleasing to God, it ought not to be public in the marketplace, but hidden in the desert; whence Matthew six: "But you, when you pray, enter your chamber." And this is what Bernard says in the Canticles: "O holy soul, be alone, so that you may keep yourself for him alone out of all, whom you have chosen for yourself out of all. Flee the public, flee even your own household, withdraw from friends and intimates and from him who ministers to you. Do you not know that you have a modest bridegroom, one who will by no means grant you his presence while others are present? Withdraw therefore, but in mind, not in body: but in intention, but in devotion, but in spirit: although also in body you do not unprofitably separate yourself at times, especially in the time of prayer."