<p>10:4<i>And he, fastening his eyes upon him and being afraid, said: What is it, Lord? And he said to him: Your prayers and your charity have gone up as a memorial before God<em>- </em></i>The allusion is to the offering of incense and sacrifice. And Cornelius didn't have to be a Jew in the temple to do this. He could do it in his own home and life situation. Note the parallel between prayer and charitable giving. Prayer is not simply words; God reads human actions as prayer, too. And mere words alone are not of themselves prayer, otherwise whoever is the better wordsmith has the greater access to God. And that is not the case; some people are wired better as regards words and verbalizing. We note too that an unbaptized person was still listened to by God, and his good deeds still registered with Him. The scale of God's observation and sensitivity to humanity is so huge as to be beyond our comprehension. Cornelius had his generous gifts responded to in the same way as his prayers- in that Peter was sent to teach him the Gospel and baptize him. This suggests that our good deeds are seen as an expression of our essential self, and are treated as prayers. Yet those good deeds are not in themselves verbalized requests. It is also doubtful whether Cornelius was specifically praying for more knowledge and the opportunity of baptism. But this is how his prayers were interpreted by God, and this passive though unexpressed desire was interpreted and responded to. Prayer is likened to incense coming up before God. But so also is the almsgiving of Cornelius; his good deeds expressed a fine spirituality in his heart, and this was counted by God as prayer. Prayer is seen as an incense offering (Ps. 141:2); but the generosity of Mary (Jn. 12:3), the work of preaching (2 Cor. 2:16); living &quot;a life of love&quot; (Eph. 5:2 NIV); giving money to the needy (Phil. 4:18) are all seen as a fragrant incense offering. The act is the prayer. Mary's anointing was to be seen as a &quot;memorial&quot; (Mk. 14:9), but the only other times this word is used are in connection with the prayers of Cornelius (Acts 10:4, cp. the OT idea of prayerful people being God's 'rememberancers'). Likewise, prophecy does not have to refer to specific, lexical statements; it can refer to the spirit and implication behind the recorded words.</p>