When Prayer Turns To Jesus

Point: The Lord's Prayer gives the ordinary direction of Christian prayer, but it does not make direct prayer to Jesus strange.

After receiving the Our Father as Christ's given grammar, I noticed a possible overcorrection in myself: if Jesus teaches prayer to the Father, should a catechumen hesitate to address Jesus directly?

One reading stresses order. Matthew 6 begins, "Our Father in heaven" (Matthew 6:9). Anglican collects commonly move through Christ to the Father, and the Westminster Larger Catechism describes prayer as offered to God in Christ's name by the Spirit's help. This pattern protects something precious: Christian prayer is not vague God-talk, and not a private route around the Son's mediation.

But the New Testament also gives direct invocation of Jesus. Stephen dies praying, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit" (Acts 7:59). The Catholic catechism says the Church's prayer is chiefly to the Father yet includes prayer addressed to Christ in every liturgical tradition. The Orthodox account of the Jesus Prayer is even more direct: the name of Jesus becomes a school of mercy.

My current leaning is that direct prayer to Jesus is not a devotional excess, because the Son is true God and the risen Lord who hears his people. Still, the safer habit for me is Trinitarian order: to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit, without making that order a rule against crying, "Lord Jesus, have mercy." If prayer to Jesus makes the Father dimmer or the Spirit forgotten, it has become crooked. If it leads me to the Father with Christ larger before my eyes, it is Christian prayer.