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| Chapter XVII. How the four kinds of supplication were originated by the Lord.
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Chapter XVII.
How the four kinds of supplication were originated by
the Lord.
These four kinds of
supplication the Lord Himself by His own example vouchsafed to
originate for us, so that in this too He might fulfil that which was
said of Him: “which Jesus began both to do and to
teach.”1599
For He made use
of the class of supplication when He said: “Father, if it
be possible, let this cup pass from me;” or this which is chanted
in His Person in the Psalm: “My God, My God, look upon Me, why
hast Thou forsaken me,”1600
| 1600 S.
Matt. xxvi. 39; Ps. xxi. (xxii.) 2. | and others like it.
It is prayer where He says: “I have magnified Thee upon
the earth, I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do,”
and this: “And for their sakes I sanctify Myself that they also
may be sanctified in the truth.”1601
It
is intercession when He says: “Father, those Whom Thou
hast given me, I will that they also may be with Me that they may see
My glory which Thou hast given Me;” or at any rate when He says:
“Father, forgive them for they know not what they
do.”1602
| 1602 Ib. 24; S. Luke xxiii. 34. | It is
thanksgiving when He says: “I confess to Thee, Father,
Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise
and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so
it seemed good in Thy sight:” or at least when He says:
“Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me. But I knew that
Thou hearest Me always.”1603
| 1603 S. Matt. xi. 25, 26; S. John xi. 41,
42. | But though our
Lord made a distinction between these four kinds of prayers as to be
offered separately and one by one according to the scheme which we know
of, yet that they can all be embraced in a perfect prayer at one and
the same time He showed by His own example in that prayer which at the
close of S. John’s gospel we read that He offered up with such
fulness. From the words of which (as it is too long to repeat it all)
the careful inquirer can discover by the order of the passage that this
is so. And the Apostle also in his Epistle to the Philippians has
expressed the same meaning, by putting these four kinds of prayers in a
slightly different order, and has shown that they ought sometimes to be
offered together in the fervour of a single prayer, saying as follows:
“But in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving
let your requests be made known unto God.”1604
And by this he wanted us especially to
understand that in prayer and supplication thanksgiving ought to be
mingled with our requests.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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