| The 60-Second Aquinas Lesson |  |
Prayer as Spoken Reason October 13, 1999 Prayer, meditation, recitation – what exactly do these have to do with the intellect? It would seem such actions deal more with emotions and passions than with reason, yet Aquinas says that prayer is, in actuality, an act of the intellect. He determines this first and foremost according to what prayer is – namely, speech. Aquinas quotes two ancient writers, Isidore and Cassiodorus, both of whom define prayer as a form of speech: "to pray is to speak" (Isidore, Etymologiarum x as quoted in ST II-II, Q. 83, Art. 1) and "prayer is spoken reason" (Cassiodorus, Commentarium in Psalmos 38:13 as quoted in ibid.). Aquinas explains: "Now speech belongs to the intellect. Therefore prayer is an act, not of the appetitive, but of the intellective power" (ibid.). Consider when you were first taught to pray. Like many, I was told that prayer is our way of talking to God, and talking is indeed an intellectual activity. It is something we consciously choose to do not out of a bodily need, which is what drives the appetites and emotions, but out of a conscious thought. As an additional side note, Aquinas points to Cassiodorus further and draws a connection between the Latin words for "prayer" and for "spoken reason." Oratio, meaning prayer, is merely a combination of oris ratio, meaning spoken reason. |