Why did the Lord Christ pray?

St. Cyril the Great says, “for what, forsooth, does He [Christ] pray, if He is full, and needs nothing that is the Father’s? To this we reply, that He permits Himself, in accordance

94 St. Augustine of Hippo, Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament 6.4 (NPNF I/6:275) amended.

95 St. Ambrose of Milan, On the Holy Spirit 1.7.89 NPNF II/10:105).

96 St. Cyril of Alexandria, A Commentary upon the Gospel According to St. Luke: Part II , trans. R. Payne Smith (Oxford University Press, 1859) 119: pp. 553–554.

with the manner of the dispensation in the flesh, to perform human actions whenever He wills, and as the season requires, without being liable to blame for so doing. For if He ate and drank, and is found partaking of sleep, what is there absurd, if also having humbled Himself to our measure, and fulfilled human righteousness, He not unfitly offered up prayer?”⁹⁷

“All that Christ did was for our edification, and for the benefit of those who believe in Him; and by proposing to us His own conduct as a sort of pattern of the spiritual mode of life, He would make us true worshippers. Let us see, therefore, in the pattern and example provided for us by Christ’s acts, the manner in which we ought to make our supplications unto God. We must pray secretly and in concealment, and with no one seeing us: … ‘But you, when you pray, go into your inner room’ (Matt. 6:6). For we ought to pray, not seeking after glory, but ‘lifting up holy hands’ (1 Tim. 2:8), while the soul, as it were, mounts aloft to the contemplation of God, withdrawing from all tumult, and quitting worldly anxiety. And this we must do not with fickleness, nor with a listless feebleness; but, on the contrary, with earnestness and zeal, and a patience worthy of admiration: for you have heard that Jesus did not merely pray, but that He also passed the night in this duty … Though divinely begotten as the Word by God the Father, yet He humbled Himself unto emptying, even to becoming our brother, by being made like unto us, and similar in all things to the inhabitants of the earth, sin only excepted. For having become like unto us from His exceeding gentleness and love to mankind, He disdains not human things: but sets before us His conduct as a type of goodness unto the end, that we may be earnest in following His footsteps.”⁹⁸

St. Cyprian says, “If He who was without sin prayed, how much more ought sinners to pray? And if He prayed continually, watching through the whole night with uninterrupted petitions, how much more ought we to watch nightly in constantly repeated prayer! The Lord prayed and asked not for Himself — for why should He who was guiltless pray on His own behalf?— but for our sins, as He Himself declared, when He said to Peter: ‘Behold, I Satan has desired that he might sift you like wheat. But I have prayed for you, that your faith should not fail’ (Luke 22:31–32).”⁹⁹

“But if for us and for our sins He both laboured and watched and prayed, how much more ought we to be instant in prayers; and to pray and to entreat the Lord Himself, and then through Him, to make satisfaction to God the Father! We have an advocate and an intercessor for our sins, Jesus Christ the Lord and our God, if only we repent of our sins past, and confess

97 St. Cyril of Alexandria, A Commentary upon the Gospel According to St. Luke: Part I , trans. R. Payne Smith (Oxford University Press, 1859) 70: pp. 322 amended.

98 St. Cyril of Alexandria, A Commentary upon the Gospel According to St. Luke: Part I , trans. R. Payne Smith (Oxford University Press, 1859) 23: pp. 94, 96 amended.

99 St. Cyprian of Carthage, Treatise 4: On the Lord’s Prayer 29–30 (ANF 5:455) amended.

and acknowledge our sins, whereby we now offend the Lord, and for the time to come engage to walk in His ways, and to fear His commandments.”¹⁰⁰