Article December 29, 1986 Issue

"Lord, teach us to pray!" So spoke the disciples to...

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Lord, teach us to pray!" So spoke the disciples to Jesus. In making this request, they confessed that they were not able to pray on their own, that they had to learn to pray. The phrase "learning to pray" sounds strange to us. If the heart does not overflow and begin to pray by itself, we say, it will never "learn" to pray. But it is a dangerous error, surely very widespread among Christians, to think that the heart can pray by itself. For then we confuse wishes, hopes, sighs, laments, rejoicings—all of which the heart can do by itself—with prayer. And we confuse earth and heaven, man and God. Prayer does not mean simply to pour out one's heart. It means rather to find the way to God and to speak with him, whether the heart is full or empty. No man can do that by himself. For that he needs Jesus Christ.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quoted in James Burtness, Shaping the Future: The Ethics of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Copyright © 1985 by Fortress Press. Used by permission of the publisher.

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