The following is from Origen's On Prayer where he addresses praying to the Father through the Son (as well as whether it is proper to pray directly to the person of the Son):
XV.1. Now if we are to take
prayer in its most exact sense, perhaps we should not pray to anyone begotten,
not even to Christ Himself, but only to the God and Father of all, to whom even
our Savior Himself prayed, as we have explained, and to whom He taught us to
pray. For when He heard "teach us to pray," He did not teach us to
pray to Himself, but to the Father by saying "Our Father in heaven, and so
forth" (Lk. l1:1£f.; Mt. 6:5ff.). For if, as is demonstrated by other
arguments, the Son is a being and subject distinct from the Father, it
follows that prayer should be addressed to the Son and not to the Father, or to
both, or to the Father alone. Anyone at all would agree that the first
possibility, to the Son and not to the Father, is completely absurd, and would
have to be maintained against the obvious facts. And if we prayed to both, then
it is obvious that we should offer our requests in the plural, saying in our
prayer, "You all supply and do good and furnish and save, and so forth."
The very expressions betray the absurdity of this alternative, nor can anyone
find in Scripture prayers addressed in the plural. Consequently, the remaining
possibility is that we should pray only to the God and Father of all, yet not
without the High Priest, who was appointed "with an oath" according
to the verse, "He has sworn and will not change His mind, You are a priest
forever after the order of Melchisedek" (Ps. 110:4; Heb. 7:20-21).
2. And so, when the
saints give thanks to God in their prayers, they acknowledge through Christ
Jesus the favors He has done. And if it is true that one who is scrupulous
about prayer ought not to pray to someone else who prays, but rather to the
Father whom our Lord Jesus taught us to address in prayers, it is especially
true that no prayer should be addressed to the Father without Him, who clearly
points this out Himself when He says, "Truly, truly, I say to you, if you
ask anything of the Father, He will give it to you in my name. Hitherto you
have asked nothing in my name; ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be
full" Gn. 16:23 -24). Now He did not say "ask me" or simply
"ask the Father." On the contrary, He said "If you ask anything
of the Father, He will give it to you in my name." For until Jesus taught
this, no one asked the Father in the name of the Son. And what Jesus said was true,
"Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name." And also true was His
saying, "Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full."
3. Let us suppose
someone thinks that we should pray to Christ Himself and argues that we are
permitted to do so because it says that He is worshiped in the text from
Deuteronomy, which admittedly refers to Christ, "Let all the angels of God
worship Him" (Deut. 32:43 LXX; Heb. 1:6). Let him be told that even the
Church, which is called Jerusalem by the prophet, is worshiped by kings and
queens, who are her nursing mothers and foster fathers. This is said in the
following passage, "Behold, I will lift up my hand to the nations, and
raise my signal to the peoples; and they shall bring your sons in their bosom,
and your daughters they shall carryon their shoulders. Kings shall be your
foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers. With their faces to the
ground they shall worship you, and lick the dust of your feet. Then you will
know that I am the Lord, and you will not be ashamed" (Is. 49:22-23).
4. Christ said,
"Why do you call me good? No one is good but God the Father alone"
(cf. Mk. 10:18; Lie 18:19; Mt. 19:17). Would He not also say:
Why do you pray to
me? You should pray only to the Father, to whom I pray myself. This is what you
learn from the holy Scriptures. For you must not pray to the High Priest
appointed on your behalf by the Father (cf. Heb. 8:3) or to the Advocate who is
charged by the Father with praying for you (cf. 1 John 2:1). Rather you must
pray through the High Priest and Advocate, who is able to sympathize with your
weaknesses, since He has been tempted in every respect as you are, and yet
tempted without sin (Heb. 4:15) because of the Father's gift to me. Learn,
then, how great a gift you have received from my Father, when you received the
Spirit of sonship (Rom. 8:15) by becoming regenerate in me, so that you. are
called sons of God and my brothers. For you have read the proclamation concerning
you that I made to the Father through David, "I will proclaim your name to
my brethren, in the midst of the Church I will praise you" (Ps. 22:22; cf.
Heb. 2:12). It IS not reasonable for those who are deemed worthy of one and the
same Father to pray to a brother. You must pray only to the Father with me and
through me.
XVI. 1. Since we hear
Jesus saying this, let us pray to God through Him, all of us saying the same
things and not divided about the way we pray. Are we not divided if some of us
pray to the Father and some to the Son, since those who pray to the Son, whether
with or without the Father, sin through lack of instruction and great
simplicity because they have not examined or inquired into the matter?
Therefore, let us pray as to a God, and let us intercede as with a Father. Let
us make supplication as of a Lord, and let us give thanks as to a God, a
Father, and a Lord, though in no sense Lord of a servant. For a father may
reasonably be supposed also lord of a son, and He is Lord of those who have
become sons through Him. Just as He is not God of the dead, but of the living
(Mt. 22:32; Mk. 12:27; Lk. 20:38), so He is not Lord of base slaves, but of
those who to begin with were in fear because of their childishness, but who
have been made noble and afterwards serve more blessedly by love than they did
in fear. For the marks of God's servants and of His sons are visible in the
soul only to the One who sees their hearts. (Origen, On Prayer in Origen:
An Exhortation to Martyrdom, Prayer, and Selected Works [trans. Rowan A.
Greer; The Classics of Western Spirituality; New York: Paulist Press, 1979] p.
112-14)
