John Calvin completes his teaching on prayer with a consideration of when we should pray.

"It is good that for greater exercise in praying each of us should establish for himself certain hours which may not pass without prayer, and that in these hours all our heart's affection may be entirely applied to that praying. These are such times as (1) when we get up in the morning, (2) before beginning our work and what we have to do that day, (3) at the hour when we take our meal and nourish ourselves with God's good things and (4) after we have eaten, and (5) when we take our rest after all our work for the day is finished."

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion: 1541 French Edition, translated by Elsie Anne McKee (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2009), p. 492, emphasis and numbers added.

So it is that Calvin identifies five occasions for daily prayer. That being said, it seems to me an odd phrase when he writes "the hour when we take our meal." Of course, we pray then. But I am wondering whether he had only one meal per day.

This is what Calvin had to say at thirty-one or thirty-two years of age on prayer.

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