Weary and suffering, consumed by anguish, Jesus turns to his father—“Abba, father” (Mark 14:36)—in prayer. For Matthew, he fell with his “face to the ground and prayed” (Matthew 26:39). In this radical way he reveals the essence of speech. The fundamental root of speech is prayer, because—as the act of prayer itself demonstrates—there is no speech that is not an invocation to the Other. Isn’t speech ultimately, as Lacan also explains, always an invocation, isn’t it always addressed to the Other? In this sense, speech, traumatically silenced in Gethsemane, can reveal its deepest structure, as an opening onto the mystery of the Other, a sacrament of the Other, the Law of the Other.
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Massimo Recalcati
Weary and suffering, consumed by anguish, Jesus turns to his father—“Abba, father” (Mark 14:36)—in prayer. For Matthew, he fell with his “face to the ground and prayed” (Matthew 26:39). In this radical way he reveals the essence of speech. The fundamental root of speech is prayer, because—as the act of prayer itself demonstrates—there is no speech that is not an invocation to the Other. Isn’t speech ultimately, as Lacan also explains, always an invocation, isn’t it always addressed to the Other? In this sense, speech, traumatically silenced in Gethsemane, can reveal its deepest structure, as an opening onto the mystery of the Other, a sacrament of the Other, the Law of the Other.
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