What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also.
Read Chapter 14
Cassiodorus Senator
AD 585
The prayer of those who sing is acceptable to God only if a pure heart carries the same message which the words of the hymn unfold.
I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also. I will pray with sense and meaning, intelligibly, so that others may understand me. S. Paul alludes to Psalm 47:7, where the same double meaning of understanding on the part of speaker and hearer is found.
Here he shows that it is in their power to obtain the gift. For, let him pray, says he, i.e., let him contribute his own part, since if you ask diligently, you will surely receive. Ask accordingly not to have the gift of tongue only, but also of interpretation, that you may become useful unto all, and not shut up your gift in yourself alone. For if I pray in a tongue, says he, my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful. Do you see how by degrees bringing his argument to a point, he signifies that not to others only is such an one useless, but also to himself; if at least his understanding is unfruitful? For if a man should speak only in the Persian, or any other foreign tongue, and not understand what he says, then of course to himself also will he be thenceforth a barbarian, not to another only, from not knowing the meaning of the sound. For there were of old many who had also a gift of prayer, together with a tongue; and they prayed, and the tongue spoke, praying either in t...
