An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 68

1 BOOK III — CHAPTER 24: Concerning our Lord's Praying.

2 Prayer is an uprising of the mind to God or a petitioning of God for what is fitting. Our Lord offered up prayer because He appropriated to Himself our personality and took our impress on Himself, and became an ensample for us, and taught us to ask of God and strain towards Him, and guided us through His own holy mind in the way that leads up to God.

3 When he said, Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me: yet, not as I will but as You will, it is clear to all that He said this as a lesson to us to ask help in our trials only from God, and to prefer God's will to our own, and as a proof that He did actually appropriate to Himself the attributes of our nature, and that He did in truth possess two wills, natural, indeed, and corresponding with His natures but yet in no wise opposed to one another. Father implies that He is of the same essence, but not as I will but as You will teaches us to prefer God's will to our own.

4 Further, these words, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? He said as making our personality His own. For neither was He ever forsaken by His divinity: nay, it was we who were forsaken and disregarded. So that it was as appropriating our personality that He offered these prayers.