Prayer 2: The prayer in the bible and the prayer of Jesus

Prayer in the Old Testament and at the time of Jesus.
For the old Jewish people, prayer was covering the main moments of every day. There was a special prayer for the early morning, for midday, evening and night. For each moment there were particular formulas to express the dedication of the day to God.

Backbone of every moment of prayer were the psalms, which were well known to all and sang. They had been written exactly to celebrate the different occasions of the life of the king or of the people. Another special prayer was the “Shema Israel” (Dt 6,4). This passage of the Torah was repeated several times a day.

Special moments of prayer were the Sabbaths in which the men adults (above 12) would go to the local synagogue to hear the word of God (usually a passage from the torah), and other commentaries taken from the prophets or the historical or wisdom books.

During the year there were several liturgical feasts, the main one being the “Passover”, the Pentecost, the feast of tabernacles, and the Yom Kippur.

Main place for prayer was the Temple of Jerusalem (when it was there), to which everybody should try to go every year, or at least once in a life time. There people would go longing to enter the place where the ark of the covenant was staying. In every village there were the synagogues which would function as prayer halls and schools as well. In the synagogue there was always a Rabbi in charge to guide the Saturday’s prayer and to teach the children about the law of the Lord. The daily prayers could be said at home or wherever a person would be because it was important to say them at the right time.

We can notice that the basic structure of this prayer is very similar to what is now the prayer of the Muslims, and also the liturgy of the Church.

A pious Jewish would always keep God in his mind and murmur prayers of praise all through the day.

There were also many moments of fasting and almsgivings which were accompanying the different feasts.


The prayer of Jesus
Jesus was a good Jewish, well trained by Joseph and would follow diligently all the traditions of his time. We see him often in the synagogues and every year in the temple of Jerusalem (at least according to the Gospel of John).

He introduced two new concepts:

First of all: the attitude towards prayer. Very important at this regard is the passage of Mt 6 in the middle of which we find the prayer of the Our Father. Jesus says clearly that prayer should come first from the heart, before coming out from our mouth. He invites us to pay attention to the words we say avoiding the bubbling of them in an empty manner. This does not take away the importance of liturgical prayers where we make use of formulas, but gives us the key for making the best use of them, which is to understand and actively accept the meaning of what we say.

The second element is the personal prayer. We see him getting often away from the group, especially at night and go to a lonely place to pray. He needs to be in communion with his “Father”, review with him what he is doing in order to be sure that he is walking in the right direction. This is like our meditation and examination of conscience. It is an important moment of our spiritual life; it is the place where conversion and changes take place.

There is an interesting point to be noticed. If we look at the Gospel of Luke we see the apostles approaching Jesus to ask him to teach them to pray. This happens at the chapter 10, already during the final journey to Jerusalem which starts at 9:51, and after important episodes like the transfiguration, the multiplication of bread and the profession of faith by Peter. So it seems that Jesus during the whole period of his apostolate and preaching to the people, never bothered to teach his disciples some prayers to say. (Every rabbi would have some special prayer by which his disciples would distinguish themselves from the others). Jesus is satisfied with their traditional way of praying and waits until the need for more comes spontaneously in them after seeing him pray. The personal prayer is not something formal, pushed by a timetable or a rule but must be a spontaneous inner push from the heart which thirsts for his creator.