Entreaty prayer

Four Kinds of Prayer Pavla Sv. Paul (1 Tim 2: 1) enumerates four kinds of prayers: «prayers, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving *. Greek words are not enough to determine what types of prayers the Apostle had in mind. Christian authors (Origen, St. Thomas Aquinas, and others) give the definition a little artificial. So, eg. According to Origen, the first kind denotes «prayers that someone sends to achieve what he needs *. It is, therefore, in short, a pleading prayer. In second place is «prayer with giving praise for things above *. Then comes the prayer, which means «a prayer to God as dared by the one who has greater confidence in God *. The last species, thanksgiving, does not need an explanation. However, if we read quite simply, we can say that there are only two kinds of prayers: prayer and surrender.
Prayer and thanksgiving The first prayer we know from life and Scripture is prayer. Man feels weak, in danger, so he asks for help from a higher, more powerful being, God. According to st. Basil is a prayer «a prayer by which godly people turn to God *. Examples of such requests are read on almost every aspect of the Old Testament. Literary criticism points to external similarities of Jewish prayers with Babylonian and Egyptian prayers. And yet there are differences. There is something impersonal, official in the Egyptian ball. Babylonians praise the deity with many honorary titles to favor it. Jews, on the other hand, are aware that their relationship with God is something special. The Lord has made a covenant with Abraham and is always willing to help whenever the people turn to him. Even individuals often turn to God, even in the small difficulties of daily life. However, in the psalms, which are official prayers of the Jewish cult, they ask for more fabulous gifts: wisdom, fear of God, trust in danger, that forgiveness of sins, and so on. The Fathers of the Church love to show how we are driven to prayer by a feeling of lack, misery, weakness. To those who would not feel it, St. : «Do you say that you do not need to pray? That’s why you need to pray that it feels like you don’t need it. » So it seems to John Chrysostomus that natural disasters, such as floods, crop failures, hunger, are not so much evil. They awaken the needs of man, turn the mind to God, and therefore they are God’s gifts. In the Christmas message of 1955, Pius XII shows how, on the contrary, the deceptive sense of security distracts from God: The industrial era accustomed to praying is a symptom of supposed self-sufficiency by which a modern man hastens. There are many who do not pray today, feel confident, and think that the technique has already overcome the plea the Lord has made to people: Give us our daily bread today! Prayer of thanks is the opposite of the prayer of worship. Who got it, thanks. Interestingly, the Hebrew language lacks a word that exactly matches our “thank you”. Semite he expressed his gratitude by praising the donor, his mercy, goodness, love. Therefore, the so-called. Praises of praise, of which there are many in Scripture, are a group of thankful prayers. A. Fonck thinks that praise and thanks are two different feelings. Thank you for getting something. Adoration is more selfless. We praise God’s greatness in ourselves. Nevertheless, we can say that both are related. For all that, God reveals it is a gift to people. It nicely reflects the verse of the Mass of the Glory: «We thank you for your great glory.» The Clement of Alexandria, therefore, encourages Christians to thank God in the first place for the gift of knowledge, for being able to understand God’s greatness. The more we know it, the more we thank. On the contrary, the higher our gratitude, the more God reveals His glory to us. In the spiritual language of today, we would say that we should thank God above all for the gifts of grace: for knowing Christian truth, for baptism and holy grace, and for the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, and for all that helps us in the growth of life. in Christ.