Luke 6:12

He went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God communing with God in prayer, asking the Father that He might choose for the ministry men fitted to be apostles, and would obtain for them an abundance of spiritual grace to enable them to fulfil the duties of their office; and also that He might teach us to pray in like manner.

So the Church at Ember-tide enjoins her children to fast and to pray that fitting persons may be chosen for the work of the ministry, and that those admitted to any holy function may be filled with grace and heavenly benediction; for as with the priest so with the people. When a chief pastor is zealous and God-fearing, he is a blessing and a strength to his diocese, but if he be an evil liver or slothful, he becomes a stumbling-block and offence to believers. In like manner, also, a good priest makes a good parish, but an evil one is for a destruction to his people.

Figuratively, Christ teaches us to pray in the night season that we may be the better able in silence and solitude to collect our thoughts and lift our hearts unto God; that we may be preserved from terror by night and from the pestilence that walketh in darkness, and also that by our prayers during the night we may obtain spiritual graces for the profit of our fellow-men during the ensuing day.

Hence Christ prayed by night and taught in the daytime. So did S. Paul, Acts 16:25; and many other saints; 1 Timothy 5:5.

For the same reason David so often commends prayer during the night time, "Ye that by night stand in the house of the Lord. Lift up your hands in the sanctuary," Psalms 134:1-2.

"At midnight I will rise to give thanks unto Thee," Psalms 119:62.

"In the night I commune with mine own heart," Psalms 77:6.

"My tears have been my meat day and night," Psalms 42:3.

See also Commentary on Deuteronomy 6:7.