Post by pim on Oct 21, 2019 11:19:25 GMT 10
I have a question for Occam and Fat and it concerns Matthew 18:20 - For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
Taking Matthew 18:20 literally, prayer is therefore not a solitary activity - and yet it frequently is. I get it that prayer is powerful when it's communitarian - we even have a prime minister who has elevated prayer to the status of national policy as a way to address the worst drought in the nation's history (i.e. since whitefellas started keeping records). But prayer is also undertaken on a solitary basis by individuals. Christ himself did a lot of solitary praying in the Garden of Gethsemane on the eve of his crucifixion. The most famous prayer in Shakespeare is the prayer of Henry V on the night before the Battle of Agincourt which is rendered in the play as a soliloquy. Nobody beats the version performed by Sir Laurence Olivier. Not even Kenneth Branagh:
O God of battles! steel my soldiers’ hearts;
Possess them not with fear; take from them now
The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers
Pluck their hearts from them. Not to-day, O Lord,
O, not to-day, think not upon the fault
My father made in compassing the crown!
I Richard’s body have interred anew;
And on it have bestow’d more contrite tears
Than from it issued forced drops of blood:
Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay,
Who twice a-day their wither’d hands hold up
Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built
Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests
Sing still for Richard’s soul. More will I do;
Though all that I can do is nothing worth,
Since that my penitence comes after all,
Imploring pardon.
So how are we to take Matthew 18:20?
P.S. We all know that this thread will be trolled and we also know by whom. My suggestion is that you put them both on Ignore so that we can have a conversation in peace.
Taking Matthew 18:20 literally, prayer is therefore not a solitary activity - and yet it frequently is. I get it that prayer is powerful when it's communitarian - we even have a prime minister who has elevated prayer to the status of national policy as a way to address the worst drought in the nation's history (i.e. since whitefellas started keeping records). But prayer is also undertaken on a solitary basis by individuals. Christ himself did a lot of solitary praying in the Garden of Gethsemane on the eve of his crucifixion. The most famous prayer in Shakespeare is the prayer of Henry V on the night before the Battle of Agincourt which is rendered in the play as a soliloquy. Nobody beats the version performed by Sir Laurence Olivier. Not even Kenneth Branagh:
O God of battles! steel my soldiers’ hearts;
Possess them not with fear; take from them now
The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers
Pluck their hearts from them. Not to-day, O Lord,
O, not to-day, think not upon the fault
My father made in compassing the crown!
I Richard’s body have interred anew;
And on it have bestow’d more contrite tears
Than from it issued forced drops of blood:
Five hundred poor I have in yearly pay,
Who twice a-day their wither’d hands hold up
Toward heaven, to pardon blood; and I have built
Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests
Sing still for Richard’s soul. More will I do;
Though all that I can do is nothing worth,
Since that my penitence comes after all,
Imploring pardon.
So how are we to take Matthew 18:20?
P.S. We all know that this thread will be trolled and we also know by whom. My suggestion is that you put them both on Ignore so that we can have a conversation in peace.