"Spiritual Host" meditation by Tertullian, priest

Prayer is a spiritual sacrifice, which has canceled the ancient sacrifices. "What do I care," he says, "about your numberless sacrifices?" I am satisfied with the burnt offerings of rams and the fat of bullocks; I don't like the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. Who requires these things from you? " (cf. Is 1, 11).
What the Lord requires, the gospel teaches: "The hour will come," he says, "when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. God is in fact Spirit ”(Jn 4:23) and therefore he seeks such worshipers.
We are the true worshipers and the true priests who, praying in spirit, in spirit offer the sacrifice of prayer, host to God appropriate and welcome, host that he requested and provided.
This victim, dedicated wholeheartedly, nourished by faith, guarded by the truth, whole by innocence, clean by chastity, crowned by charity, we must accompany the altar of God with the decorum of good works between psalms and hymns, and she he will implore everything from God.
What in fact will God deny to the prayer that proceeds from the spirit and the truth, he who so willed it? How many proofs of its effectiveness do we read, hear and believe!
The ancient prayer delivered from fire, from wild beasts and from hunger, yet it had not received form from Christ.
How much wider is the field of action of Christian prayer! Christian prayer may not call the angel of dew in the middle of the fire, it will not close its jaws to the lions, it will not bring the farmer's lunch to the hungry, it will not give the gift of immunizing oneself from pain, but it certainly gives the virtue of firm endurance. and patient to those who suffer, empower the capacities of the soul with faith in reward, show the great value of pain accepted in the name of God.
We hear that in ancient times prayer inflicted blows, defeated enemy armies, impeded the benefit of rain to enemies. Now, however, it is known that prayer takes away all wrath of divine justice, it is solicitous of enemies, supplication for persecutors. He was able to pluck the waters from the sky, and also impetrate the fire. Only prayer wins God. But Christ did not want it to be the cause of evil and gave it all the power of good.
Therefore his only task is to recall the souls of the dead from the same path of death, to support the weak, to cure the sick, to free the demoniacs, to open the doors of prison, to loosen the chains of the innocent. It washes sins, rejects temptations, turns off persecutions, comforts pusillanimous people, encourages the generous, guides pilgrims, calms storms, arrests evildoers, supports the poor, softens the hearts of the rich, raises the fallen, supports the weak supports the forts.
The angels also pray, every creature prays. The domestic and ferocious animals pray and bend their knees and, coming out of the stables or the dens, they look at the sky not with closed jaws, but making the air of shouting vibrate in the way that is proper to them. Even the birds when they wake up, rise towards the sky, and instead of hands they open their wings in the shape of a cross and chirp something that may seem like a prayer.
But there is a fact which demonstrates more than any other the duty of prayer. Behold, this: that the Lord himself prayed.
To him be honor and power forever and ever. Amen.