NOTES for Mar 6:46
The fact that during His earthly ministry Jesus prays like any human being puzzles some people. Why, one might ask, should the One who from the very moment of conception bears in Himself all the fullness of God pray? Of course, He is no less human than any of us, and even much more. But why ask for what you already have? Such a view of prayer is characteristic of many of us fallen people. And no wonder: for us, prayer most often becomes a request addressed to God, or simply a kind of seeking for God, when, not sensing His presence, we ask Him to respond, to answer, to enter our life. Jesus, of course, did not have to ask for anything of that kind: during His earthly life He experienced God-forsakenness only once, during His sufferings on the cross.
We are the ones who have to ask, because a certain distance separates us from God, not so much outward, which in any case remains insurmountable for us, as inward. God is near to us, while we are usually far from Him. We cry to Him from afar and often cannot make ourselves heard, not because He does not hear us, but because we do not know how to hear Him. Yet even some of us, people whose nature is distorted by sin, can pray differently. They can pray so that prayer becomes a continuous inward standing before God and communion with Him.
People who take spiritual life seriously have sought this in every age. That is why the practice of inward prayer is so widespread in different spiritual traditions and ascetic systems. But inward prayer also varies, just as the fullness of communion with God varies. When that fullness becomes ultimate for a human being, prayer as word disappears, and only the meeting of two wills, two intentions, remains: God's and the human one. Ordinary people often learn such prayer all their lives. Jesus, one might say, was born with it.
This meeting and unity of two wills, His own human will and the will of His heavenly Father, is His usual spiritual state. His whole earthly path is fullness of service, fullness of standing before God, and fullness of communion with the Father. But sometimes He, like any human being, needed to speak with His Father alone and in silence. And then He goes away to pray. For He came into the world in order to bring into it the fullness of the Kingdom. And He needed to be in this Kingdom and speak with His Father face to face. Not for His own sake, but for the sake of those to whom, by the Father's will, He was opening the doors of the Kingdom.