To Whom may I address my prayers? To Our Lord Jesus Christ or directly to God the Father as well, to the Spirit, the Mother of God or any Saint? Can I be sure that my words will be heard or should I comply with a specific ritual and avoid any spontaneous dialogue with the Persons of the Holy Trinity?
All these questions are pending today in the Orthodox Christian Church as within most Churches and the Jewish Communities. Some believers or God-searchers would be very strict about the attitude which should be convenient in a praying community or in private address to God. Others would be more liberal, but there is no normative behaviour except that a true believer should know that praying releases him and opens to him the Gates of Lovingkindness and enhancement. We need to breathe, and no one can impose a style of prayer. It belongs to traditions which grew in the course of the centuries and go sometimnes back to the very inception of the Church, moreover the first words uttered by the human being.
The whole mankind is praying and every human being, at a special moment of his/her life could refer to a "higher personality" and beg for something or expect something from a "superior Life-giver or Power". This concerns the animists, the so-called atheists since "a-theist" needs to mention some god to show their reluctance to any kind of faith. Other people are believers in some pantheistic all-encompassing godly Power, which drifts men and women from despair, which does not mean that they really discovered hope or the feeling of everlasting life and joy. The Buddhist Path in its various obediences always points out how painful life is although it proposes a path to quietness.
But most interestingly, a believer, whatever denomination or religion, is often deeply tempted to direct his personal prayer on his own life and person, individually, centering his words, normally uttered to God, but not to Him or to any Mediator but considering himself as the main subject and object of the prayer. In that particular case, his prayers appear to be a monologue. The late German Cardinal Hans Urs von Balthasar had a profound desire to discuss with the Jewish historian of Hassidism, Martin Buber, whom he never met. He then wrote a small book called "Einsame Zweisprache mit Buber" [Lonely dialogue with Buber], showing how hard it is, in some specific historical circumstances, to dialogue with a "Mitmensch", whoever is concerned. If human beings may often not agree to discuss and be in contact, in full contradiction with all the advices given by the Bible and the Gospel, it is evident that it is very difficult to reach a point of true dialogue and praying contact with the Most High.
On the other hand, the core of the Jewish tradition is to be centered on God who created the heaven and the earth, time and space. Jewishness constantly faces the basic and essential call to develop and carry a permanent - though hard and painful - dialogue between God and His creatures.
This presupposes the existence of a spiritual behaviour which is not known to our generation and was hardly accepted by the previous ones as far the Jewish and Christian vocation consists to stand steadfast at any time in order to reveal and uncover the Divine Presence of God in this world, allowing any human being to have access to his/her Creator Who shaped and is the Source of the final Aim of their lives.
It is written in the Talmud [Tractrates Nedarim 39b and Pessahim 54a]: "Seven things existed before the world was created: the Torah [the Law], the Tshuvah [Penance and conversion], the Gan Eden [Eden's Garden], the Gey Hinnom [Gehenna], the Kisse HaKavod [the Throne of the Divine Glory], the Devir [Holy of Holies] and the Shem HaMashiah [Name of the Messiah]".
Before God decided to create and substantiate the visible worlds and to shape all the creatures, He has a sort of "committee" or "permanent counseling body" in heaven which assisted Him, especially in taken decisions. These words of the Talmud are of great interest since they show that, before the creation of the world, God could get some advices from "Persons" who He had created and who, in the course of the history, were really substantialized such as the Torah, the Gan Eden, the Holy of Holies and even the Messiah Himself embodied in the name Shem HaMashiah. We suppose that these excerpts from the Talmud trace back to the second century A.D. They confirm the fact that discussions were intensively conducted within the framework of the Jewish communities about the preexistence of the Messiah as attested in the Holy Gospel
TO CONTINUE TO PAGE 2 PLEASE PRESS HERE
HOW to contact us?