Did Jesus pray? How did he pray? Who was it for? Why did he pray?

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Dear Father Angelo,

I trouble you to have light on a few questions that I ask myself without finding an answer. I turn to you because it is a few years since I have lost my spiritual leaders, who have risen to the Father, and I do not have a good relationship with the priests of my parish,  so much so that for some time it has been very difficult to participate in the daily Holy Mass. This is a painful problem that I prefer not to delve into. However, I always pray to the Lord to give me the strength not to renounce this beautiful and holy custom. I could change the parish but, as you well understand, at 80 it is difficult to change.

Now I come to my questions. For a while, it’s been stirring in my head, as I read the Gospel, the image of Jesus praying. So I ask myself a series of questions that I can’t answer by myself.  How did he pray? Who was it for? Why did he pray?

When I ask myself the question “who was he addressing?” my poor mind gets confused. If He is the second person of the Most Holy Trinity, does He turn to Himself when He prays? I have always known that praying means turning to God for help and protection, so when did Jesus pray to whom did he turn? Here I stop because mental confusion increases, my ignorance does not allow me to understand.

Another question that I ask myself without being able to give an answer concerns the moment in the history of the world in which Jesus descends to earth to free us from sin. Why in that historical period and not before? Was there any specific reason?

Please help me to enlighten my mind. Thank you, and I cordially salute you.

Joseph

Dear Joseph, 

1. St. Thomas says, “Prayer is an act of reason, and consists in beseeching a superior” (Summa theologica, II-II, 83, 10). And after saying that the divine Persons themselves do not pray, he adds, “The Son is said to ask or pray, in respect of His human nature and not in respect of His Godhead: and the Holy Spirit is said to ask, because He makes us ask” (Ib., Ad 1). 

2. It should be remembered that in Christ there were two natures: the divine and the human. If the divine will alone is capable of accomplishing whatever it wants, according to what the psalm says, “Whatever the Lord pleased, He hath done ” (Ps 135:6), “But because the Divine and the human wills are distinct in Christ, and the human will of itself is not efficacious enough to do what it wishes, except by Divine power, hence to pray belongs to Christ as man and as having a human will” (Summa theologica, II, 21,1) And again, “Christ as God and not as man was able to carry out all He wishes, since a man He was not omnipotent (Ib., Ad 1). 

3. “Nevertheless, being both God and man, He wished to offer prayers to the Father, not as though He were incompetent, but for our instruction (Ib.). He asked the Father, “Give glory to your son” (Jn 17:1). Christ also wanted his body after his passion to receive that glory that he did not yet have. And such glory awaited him from the Father. Therefore, “He did not need prayer. It was for us He prayed” (Ib., Ad 2). However, “even the glory that Christ asked for himself in prayer concerned the salvation of others. Therefore also the prayer that he prayed for himself was in some way for others” (Ib., Ad 3).

 4. Furthermore, in his prayer Christ asked the Father that if it were possible that cup might pass from him. In this regard St. Thomas writes, “The request for the chalice to be removed is interpreted in various ways by the Holy Fathers”. Saint Ilario, for example, interprets it in the sense that his passion also passed to the martyrs, that is to say that they too could experience it. According to St. Jerome, Jesus asked that the fear of drinking the cup not scare him. According to Dionysius of Alexandria that death did not hold him.

 5. In his prayer, Jesus asked for eternal life for us too. This is why he wanted to suffer passion and death, “Father, I wish that where I am they also may be with me, that they may see my glory that you gave me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world”  (Jn 17:24). 

6. He certainly prayed with the Father. It is his prayer, the one he recited in our place and the one he recites together with us every time we make it ours.

7. Finally, ask why Jesus wanted to come into the world precisely in the historical circumstance of 2000 years ago. The answer is given to us by Sacred Scripture, “But when the fullness of time has come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law…” (Gal 4:4). And that is when the opportune time came in all respects. The Jerusalem Bible comments, “This expression designates the coming of the messianic or eschatological times, which fill the long wait of the centuries as a finally full measure.” It was the moment in which all the prophecies referring to Christ came true in fullness.

 I wish you well, bless you and remember you in prayer. 

Father Angelo