Entreaty prayer

Four Kinds of Prayer: Pavla Sv. Paul (1 Tim 2:1) enumerates four kinds of prayer: «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 and in danger, so he asks for help from a higher, more powerful being, God. According to St. Basil, it is a prayer, “a prayer by which godly people turn to God. Almost every aspect of the Old Testament contains examples of such requests. Literary criticism points to external similarities between Jewish prayers and Babylonian and Egyptian prayers. And yet there are differences. Something impersonal and official marks the Egyptian ball. Babylonians praise the deity with many honorary titles in order to win its favor. 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, 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, and weakness. To those who would not feel it, St.: «Do you say that you can skip prayer? That’s why you need to pray that it feels like you can do without it. So it seems to John Chrysostomus that natural disasters, such as floods, crop failures, and hunger, are not so much evil. They awaken man’s needs, turn the mind to God, and therefore are God’s gifts. In the Christmas message of 1955, Pius XII shows how, by contrast, a deceptive sense of security distracts from God: The industrial era, which was accustomed to prayer, is a symptom of the supposed self-sufficiency that modern man hastens toward. Many do not pray today; they feel confident and think 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, Hebrew lacks a word that exactly matches our “thank you.” Semites expressed gratitude by praising the donor’s mercy, goodness, and 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. This reflects the verse from the Mass of the Glory: «We thank you for your great glory.» Clement of Alexandria, therefore, encourages Christians to thank God first of all for the gift of knowledge, which enables them to understand God’s greatness. The more we know it, the more we thank it. 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.