[35] And Jesus wept. [36] So the Jews said, "See how he loved him." [37] But some of them said, "Could not the one who opened the eyes of the blind man have done something so that this man would not have died?" [38] So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay across it. [39] Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the dead man's sister, said to him, "Lord, by now there will be a stench; he has been dead for four days." [40] Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?" [41] So they took away the stone. And Jesus raised his eyes and said, "Father, I thank you for hearing me. [42] I know that you always hear me; but because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that you sent me." [43] And when he had said this, he cried out in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" [44] The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face was wrapped in a cloth. So Jesus said to them, "Untie him and let him go."
(CCC 2603) The evangelists have preserved two more explicit prayers offered by Christ during his public ministry. Each begins with thanksgiving. In the first, Jesus confesses the Father, acknowledges, and blesses him because he has hidden the mysteries of the Kingdom from those who think themselves learned and has revealed them to infants, the poor of the Beatitudes (Cf. Mt 11:25-27 and Lk 10:21-23). His exclamation, "Yes, Father!" expresses the depth of his heart, his adherence to the Father's "good pleasure," echoing his mother's Fiat at the time of his conception and prefiguring what he will say to the Father in his agony. The whole prayer of Jesus is contained in this loving adherence of his human heart to the mystery of the will of the Father (Cf. Eph 1:9). (CCC 2604) The second prayer, before the raising of Lazarus, is recorded by St. John (Cf. Jn 11:41-42). Thanksgiving precedes the event: "Father, I thank you for having heard me," which implies that the Father always hears his petitions. Jesus immediately adds: "I know that you always hear me," which implies that Jesus, on his part, constantly made such petitions. Jesus' prayer, characterized by thanksgiving, reveals to us how to ask: before the gift is given, Jesus commits himself to the One who in giving gives himself. The Giver is more precious than the gift; he is the "treasure"; in him abides his Son's heart; the gift is given "as well" (Mt 6:21, 33). The priestly prayer of Jesus holds a unique place in the economy of salvation (Cf. Jn 17 It reveals the ever present prayer of our High Priest and, at the same time, contains what he teaches us about our prayer to our Father. (CCC 240) Jesus revealed that God is Father in an unheard-of sense: he is Father not only in being Creator; he is eternally Father by his relationship to his only Son who, reciprocally, is Son only in relation to his Father: "No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him“ (Mt 11-27). (CCC 241) For this reason the apostles confess Jesus to be the Word: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"; as "the image of the invisible God"; as the "radiance of the glory of God and the very stamp of his nature" (Jn 1:1; Col 1:15; Heb 1:3).
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