The Seven Petitions

St. John Chrysostom. Having mentioned this nobility through adoption, this highest gift, this unity of honor and the love among brothers, having drawn listeners away from the earth and set them in the heavens—let us now see what, in the end, Jesus commands us to pray for. Surely the very naming of God as Father already contains within itself sufficient instruction concerning every virtue: one who has called God Father, and the common Father at that, must of necessity so live as not to prove unworthy of this nobility and to show a zeal equal to the gift. Yet the Savior was not satisfied with this name alone, but added further sayings.

St. Gregory of Nyssa. The Law, “having a shadow of the good things to come” (Heb. 10:1), and proclaiming truth through certain typological intimations, when it introduces a priest into the sanctuary to offer prayer to God—first cleanses the one entering by certain purifying sacrifices and sprinklings, then, having adorned him with the priestly vestment richly embroidered with gold, purple, and dyes of other colors, having placed upon him the breastplate and the mitre, attached little bells and pomegranates to the hem of the garment, fastened the upper garment at the shoulders, and adorned the head with a diadem, abundantly poured oil upon his hair—finally leads him into the sanctuary to perform the mystical rites.

The spiritual Lawgiver—our Lord Jesus Christ—stripping the Law of its bodily coverings and making clear the figurative meaning of the types, does not in the first place choose only one person from the whole people to enter into conversation with God, but grants to all equally the dignity of priesthood, offering the common grace of priesthood to all who desire it; and then he does not adorn the priest with borrowed ornament found in some dye or weaver’s art to give a skillfully fashioned beauty, but lays upon him the proper and kindred adornment: in place of the variously embroidered garment, he makes him bloom with the graces of the virtues; he adorns the breast not with earthly gold, but gives beauty to the heart through a blameless and pure conscience. He also fits to this breastpiece the brilliance of precious stones—which, in the Apostle’s view, corresponds to the brightness of the holy commandments. And the lower garment protects that part whose adornment consists in such a covering—surely you know that the adornment of such a part is the garment of chastity. He has attached to the “fringes” of the spiritual life spiritual “bells,” “pomegranates,” and “flowers” (Exod. 28:34), beneath which another may rightly understand what is visible in a virtuous life, so that the passing of this life may be glorious; and therefore to these fringes, in place of a bell, he has given the harmonious word of faith, and in place of a pomegranate—the hidden readiness of hope in what is to come, concealed beneath a stern life, and in place of flowers—the beautifully blooming beauty of paradise. Thus he leads him into the sanctuary and into the inner part of the temple. This sanctuary is not an inanimate one made by hands, but the hidden chamber of our heart—if indeed it is truly impenetrable to vice and inaccessible to evil thoughts. He adorns the head with heavenly contemplation, not inscribing letters on a golden tablet, but engraving God Himself upon the ruling intellect. And upon the hair he pours oil composed within the soul itself from virtues, and prepares him to offer to God in mystical worship a fragrant sacrifice and offering—not of something else, but of himself. Thus led by the Lord into the priesthood, having slain the thinking of the flesh with the spiritual sword “which is the Word of God” (Eph. 6:17), and then abiding in the sanctuary, he propitiates God, having consecrated himself by such a sacrifice and offered his body “as a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God” (Rom. 12:1).

How one must prepare oneself, as one being consecrated, has been sufficiently shown by the word in what has been examined above; it remains to consider the very petition which the Lord has commanded one who abides within the sanctuary to raise up to God.