Communing Is More than Just the Eucharist
There is something fascinating to me about the moments that Jesus prays. It really challenges me to reevaluate what I think prayer is. What runs through my head is this simple question: Jesus is God...what is he praying about? We see one of these passages in Matthew 14. At the first of this chapter Jesus finds out that Herod has killed John the Baptist. Jesus's reaction is to go out to the desert places to pray, but as often happens, the multitudes follow him. He doesn't send them away so he can pray, but rather, he has compassion on them he sees their needs, that they have been following him for three days with no food, and he feeds all 5,000 of them. Then, he sends away the disciples, he sends away the multitude, and finally, he prays. So, what or how does God pray to God? A quote about prayer on this year's St. Tikhon Monastery wall calendar seems to help explain this a little. Two or three months back, it had a quote from St. John Climacus: "prayer is converse an