INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS ON CHRISTIAN PRAYER
by Benedict XVI
In general terms, prayer is the fundamental religious act: it is, in some way, the attempt to enter concretely into contact with God. The peculiarity of Christian prayer lies in the fact that one prays together with Jesus Christ and, at the same time, prays to Him. Jesus is at once man and God and can thus be the bridge, the pontifex, who makes it possible to overcome the infinite abyss between God and man.
In this sense, Christ is also, generally speaking, the ontological possibility of prayer. For this reason, He is also the practical guide to prayer. That is why His disciples, who had seen Him pray, addressed this request to Him: “Lord, teach us to pray” (Lk 11:1). They recalled that John the Baptist had taught his disciples to pray, knowing well that He is infinitely closer to God than even the greatest religious figure: John the Baptist.
Thus emerge the two fundamental characteristics of prayer: that relative to being and that relative to awareness. They are intertwined with one another. The profound bond with God, in general terms, consists in abiding with Him. In Jesus’ school of prayer, our knowledge of Him grows, as does our closeness to Him. In this regard, we must also keep in mind Jesus’ criticism of mistaken or insufficient ways of praying.
The juxtaposition with the Cross, evident throughout His proclamation and even in the prophetic words that had marked the tenor of prophecy up to Jesus—“To obey is better than sacrifice, to heed is better than the fat of rams” (1 Sam 15:22)—is already clear. Moreover, Christian prayer, insofar as it is prayer together with Jesus Christ, is always anchored in the Eucharist, leads to it, and takes place within it.
The Eucharist is prayer fulfilled with one’s whole being. It is the critical synthesis of cult and true worship. In it, Jesus has said His definitive “no” to mere words and His “no” to animal sacrifices, and He has placed in their stead the great “yes” of His life and death.
Thus the Eucharist represents the definitive critique of cult and, at the same time, the cult in the broadest sense of the term. The Fathers of the Church rightly characterized it on the one hand as the end of paganism, as consuetudo [custom], and on the other as characterizing Christianity itself as prayer. I believe we ought to reflect much more deeply on this fundamental opposition.
This fundamental orientation of Jesus’ dramatic history of prayer enables us to understand the whole realism with which He went about His proclamation. The parable of the man who did not want to get up to give bread to his friend clearly says that prayer is always also an overcoming of our inertia, which inspires so many excuses for not rising. To pray means to push against this inertia of the heart and therefore also means the humility of bringing before God even the small things of our daily life, asking for His help.
One final point.
Often, the realistic and humble way of praying is presented as an objection to petitionary prayer as such: that adequate prayer should always and only be praise of God, not continual begging. This would already be foolish, since God could not and should not be bothered with our small things. In our daily life, however, we must think of ourselves. Yet in reality we need God precisely in order to be able to live our everyday life starting from Him and oriented toward Him. Precisely in not forgetting that our Father is the one in whom we trust, the Lord’s Prayer consists of seven petitions.
Asking God also and above all means purifying our desires so that we can place them before God and so that they may be inserted into the “we” of the family of Christ.
Source: The Catholic Herald
