ola sigurdsonmeaning (compare the prayers of Friedrich Nietzsche and Jacques
Derrida, for instance). There are many forms of prayer: praise, thanks-
giving, intercession, supplication, confession, petition, etc. Prayers
could be formulated as anything from short interjections over the
elaborate and poetical to the wordless and contemplative. Prayer could
be something that could take place in private, but it could also be part
of a social liturgy. My point here would, however, not be to give a
comprehensive overview of all possible forms of prayer. For my pur-
poses here and now it would suffice to give a short definition that fits
well with the Christian practice of prayer: “prayer is action that com-
municates between human and divine realms.”^11 Both as a private act
of devotion and as a collective act of worship the Christian prayer is
directed towards God and is a part of a ritual context that aims at com-
munication with God. But the very word “communication” could be
misleading if it is understood as a purely instrumental delivery of a
message from human beings to God; the act of communication in
prayer is also an act of communion, i.e. an act of communion with God
that could but not necessarily must be expressed in words. Prayer is
not by necessity a logocentric act, which is not least shown by the
central place that contemplation or “silent prayer” has had and still
has within the Christian tradition of prayer. What I am interested in
here, however, is not the different forms of prayer but principally how
prayer positions the person praying in relation to God — i.e. a kind of
phenomenology of prayer.
Let me take a short example how this could work with the help of
a couple of lines from a prayer that according to most scholars is
formulated by Jesus himself.^12 The prayer “Our Father” has deep roots
in Jewish traditions of prayer, and it has since the beginning of the
Christian church been a central part of both private and collective acts
of prayer as well as its theological reflection. I shall quote it in the
- Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, Prayer: A History, Boston/New York:
Houghton Mifflin, 2005, 5. Originally in italics. - For an exegesis of this prayer, see Ulrich Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus:
Matt. 1–7, First volume, Evangelisch-Katolischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testa-
ment, Bd I/1, eds. Josef Gnilka, Hans-Josef Klauck et al, Fifth edition, Zürich/
Braunschweig/Neukirchen-Vluyn: Benziger Verlag/Neukirchener Verlag, 2002,
432–458.