Caspar David Friedrich, "Angels in Adoration"
In my two posts on prayer I wrote about the prayer of
petition and the prayer of thanksgiving. The triangle, or trinity, of prayer
now needs to be completed by paying attention to what is, in the tradition of
the Church, considered the highest and most celestial form of prayer, the
prayer of adoration.
In petition, we ask, we beg, we beseech; and we need to
learn what to ask for, how to ask for it, and how to deal with the result. In
thanksgiving, we say Thank you; and we need to learn about illogicality an d
discretion. What is the prayer of adoration?
Latin ad-oro
originally means “to speak to”, then becomes “to address a request or prayer
to” and eventually takes on the meaning of “to worship, to venerate”. In Greek
there are the verbs sebomai and proskunein, the latter implying a
physical movement such as kneeling or prostration. Whereas the English word
“worship” is originally a noun meaning something like “value-ness”, greatness,
honourableness, and later becomes a verb meaning to honour, to venerate.
Somehow, the prayer of adoration is well beyond that. Why?
Because it is disinterested, unlike petition and thanksgiving. It is the pure,
natural condition for a created being: turning to the light and warmth of its
Creator as the sunflower turns to the sun. In part it is simply basking; but
there is in adoration a return movement of joy, of pleasure, of active giving.
What do we give when we adore? As the Psalm says, “of thine own do we give
thee” – there is nothing we can give God that did not come from Him, that is
not always already His. And yet there is joy in giving back that borrowed joy.
The prayer of adoration is also contemplation. As the
sunflower contemplates the sun, the human soul contemplates the living God.
Often, His light is too bright for us to regard directly; so we contemplate Him
in His creation. Thomas Traherne, whom I have had occasion to quote before, did
so and managed to express it gloriously in human words. Others have
contemplated God’s glory and have fallen silent before it. Still others have
lost themselves, lost their selves, in becoming one with it, as a comet might
fall into the sun.
The prayer of adoration is the prayer of the angels. It is
the prayer of all those seen by St John in his vision of Revelation, those who
surround the throne of the Almighty, those whose joy is eternal in their
unceasing song. Nevertheless, this prayer of adoration has roots. It grows out
of the prayer of thanksgiving: part of the joy of contemplating God is the
immense gratitude for receiving all that we now give back in praise; for His
creation, its beauty, its emotion, all that we see and love in life. And the
prayer of thanksgiving, in turn, has its roots in the prayer of petition; for
we are given what we first asked, or we are given what it did not even occur to
us toask, or what we dared not ask. And so the trinity of prayer is complete; and
the immeasurable, unspeakable, huge silent light of God is all in all.
Image courtesy of Abuto George Evangelical Ministry
