How Many Times Did Jesus Pray in the Bible? 21 Occasions. How Often Did Jesus Pray?

Jesus is shown praying on 21 occasions in the four Gospels, counting each event once even when several of them tell it. Luke has 14 of the 21. No Gospel says how many times a day he prayed, but they show a habit: early in the morning, alone, on mountains, and all night before he chose the twelve apostles.

The count of 21 takes in every moment when a Gospel says that Jesus prayed, gave thanks or said a blessing over food, or gives the words he spoke to the Father, and the one time he says he prayed. Gethsemane, where he prayed three times, counts as one occasion; the three prayers from the cross count as three. Four more moments look like prayer without the word, such as his blessing of the children, and 21 plus these four makes 25. Counted Gospel by Gospel instead, the 21 occasions make 32 mentions. The Lord’s Prayer is not on the list. Jesus gave it to his disciples, “When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven” (Luke 11:2), and the Gospels never show him praying it himself.

When did Jesus pray in the Bible?

These are the 21 occasions in the order the Gospels tell them. Where several Gospels tell the same event, all of them are listed; Matthew places the thanksgiving of row 10 before the feedings, and the table follows Luke, who places it after. Quotations are from the King James Version.

On most of these occasions the Gospels say only that he prayed, gave thanks or blessed. They give the words he spoke to the Father eight times: the thanksgiving in Matthew and Luke, the prayers at Lazarus’s tomb and in John 12, John 17, Gethsemane and the three prayers from the cross. The longest is John 17, which fills a whole chapter of 26 verses, and in it he prays for believers still to come: “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word” (John 17:20).

How many times did Jesus pray in each Gospel?

Matthew shows Jesus praying on 7 of the 21 occasions, Mark on 7, Luke on 14 and John on 4. Ten of the occasions are told as prayer only in Luke: the baptism, the withdrawals into the wilderness, the night before he chose the Twelve, the moment before Peter’s confession, the Transfiguration, the prayer that led a disciple to ask how to pray, his prayer for Peter, two of the prayers from the cross, and the blessing at Emmaus. Matthew and Mark also tell of the baptism and the Transfiguration, but only Luke says that Jesus was praying. Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers notes that Luke, “throughout his Gospel, lays stress on this feature in our Lord’s life.”

Mark’s seven are the morning in the solitary place, the two feedings, the mountain after the first feeding, the Last Supper, Gethsemane and the cry from the cross. John alone has the prayers at the tomb of Lazarus, in John 12 and in John 17.

Why do counts of Jesus’ prayers differ?

The Gospels give no total, so every count rests on choices. The first is what to do with events told more than once. The feeding of the five thousand appears in all four Gospels; counted four times, it alone adds three, and counting every Gospel’s mention turns 21 into 32.

The second is how to divide a scene. Matthew says Jesus prayed three times in Gethsemane, the third time “saying the same words” (Matthew 26:44), yet the count of 21 takes Gethsemane as one occasion. Taking the three prayers from the cross as three is a choice of the same kind. The first came as he was crucified, which Mark puts at “the third hour” (Mark 15:25); the other two came close together around the ninth hour, “My God, my God” (Mark 15:34) and then “Father, into thy hands” as he died (Luke 23:44–46). Counted as one scene, the cross gives a total of 19. The Catechism of the Catholic Church goes further. It reads all seven of his last words as prayer, “even in his last words on the Cross, where prayer and the gift of self are but one”, including the words he spoke to the thief and to his mother.

The third is what counts as prayer. Four moments come close without the Gospels calling them prayer. Parents brought children “that he should put his hands on them, and pray” (Matthew 19:13), and Mark says “he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them” (Mark 10:16). Before healing a deaf man, “looking up to heaven, he sighed” (Mark 7:34). After the Last Supper, “when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives” (Matthew 26:30). And at his ascension “he lifted up his hands, and blessed them” (Luke 24:50). Counting these gives 25.

Other moments are not described as prayer at all. During the forty days in the wilderness Matthew says he “fasted forty days and forty nights” (Matthew 4:2) and does not mention prayer. John says only that he “departed again into a mountain himself alone” (John 6:15); it is Matthew and Mark who say he went up to pray. Promises such as “I will pray the Father” (John 14:16) look ahead, and are left out of the count.

One verse also depends on the manuscript. The Catholic New American Bible prints “Father, forgive them” in brackets, with a note that this part of Luke 23:34 “does not occur in the oldest papyrus manuscript of Luke and in other early Greek manuscripts”. The King James Version prints it without comment. Leave it out and the count is 20.

So the same Gospels give 19, 20, 21, 25 or 32, depending on the rule.

How many times a day did Jesus pray?

The Gospels never say. They show him praying at dawn, at night, at meals and at the great turning points of his life, but they give no daily number and no fixed hours.

He did grow up in a people who prayed at set times. The Shema, which begins “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord”, tells Israel to keep these words “when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” (Deuteronomy 6:4–7), and Jesus called it “the first of all the commandments” (Mark 12:29). The Psalms speak of prayer “Evening, and morning, and at noon” (Psalm 55:17), and Daniel “kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed” (Daniel 6:10). After the resurrection Peter and John went to the Temple “at the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour” (Acts 3:1). The Mishnah, the code of Jewish law written down between about 200 and 220 AD, around 170 years after Jesus’ death, sets three prayers a day, in the morning, the afternoon and the evening, and the Shema each morning and evening. Of the third prayer it says, “The evening prayer has no fixed time.”

Luke says that “as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day” (Luke 4:16), and the Catechism of the Catholic Church says that Jesus “learns to pray in the words and rhythms of the prayer of his people, in the synagogue at Nazareth and the Temple at Jerusalem.” It is likely that he kept the daily prayers that devout Jews of his time kept, but no Gospel says so.

The first Christians did set a number. The Didache, an early Christian handbook that many scholars date to the first century, gives the Lord’s Prayer and then says, “Thrice in the day thus pray.” Paul’s instruction was shorter still: “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).

What time did Jesus get up to pray?

Mark gives the clearest answer: “in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed” (Mark 1:35). Ellicott renders the Greek “very early, while it was yet night”. The day before had been long: in Capernaum Jesus had taught in the synagogue, and at the house of Simon and Andrew “at even, when the sun did set, they brought unto him all that were diseased” (Mark 1:32).

Other prayers ran through the night. In Jesus’ day the night was divided into four watches, and Barnes’ Notes on the Bible gives the fourth as “from three to six”. After the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus went up the mountain to pray, “and when the evening was come, he was there alone”; he came to the disciples on the lake “in the fourth watch of the night” (Matthew 14:23–25). Before he chose the Twelve he “continued all night in prayer to God” (Luke 6:12). In his last days in Jerusalem he taught in the Temple by day, “and at night he went out, and abode in the mount that is called the mount of Olives” (Luke 21:37).

How long did Jesus pray?

Sometimes for hours. The night before he chose the Twelve lasted until “when it was day” (Luke 6:13), and on the mountain after the feeding he prayed from evening into the last watch of the night. In Gethsemane he came back to Peter and asked, “could ye not watch with me one hour?” (Matthew 26:40), which suggests that the first of his prayers there lasted about an hour.

Many of his recorded prayers are short. At the tomb of Lazarus he spoke two sentences, and each prayer from the cross is a single line. He warned against “vain repetitions” (Matthew 6:7) and against those who “for a pretence make long prayers” (Mark 12:40).

How did Jesus pray?

He called God Father. Every prayer whose words the Gospels give names God as Father in its first words, except the cry from the cross, “My God, my God”, which are the opening words of Psalm 22. In Gethsemane Mark keeps the word Jesus used: “Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee” (Mark 14:36). Abba is the Aramaic word for father. His last words in Luke also come from a psalm: “Into thine hand I commit my spirit” (Psalm 31:5) became “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46).

The Gospels note his posture several times. He “looked up to heaven” before blessing the loaves (Mark 6:41) and “lifted up his eyes to heaven” before the prayer of John 17 (John 17:1). In Gethsemane Luke says he “kneeled down, and prayed” (Luke 22:41), Matthew that he “fell on his face” (Matthew 26:39), and Mark that he “fell on the ground” (Mark 14:35).

He prayed in secret and he prayed aloud. At the raising of Lazarus he thanked the Father where the people standing by could hear, and said why: “because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me” (John 11:42). That prayer also shows him giving thanks before the miracle: “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me” (John 11:41).

Why did Jesus pray three times in Gethsemane?

The Gospels do not give a reason; they show what happened. Matthew tells it most fully. Jesus “fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39). He came back and found the disciples asleep, and told them, “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation” (Matthew 26:41). The second time the prayer had changed: “O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done” (Matthew 26:42). He found them asleep again, and “prayed the third time, saying the same words” (Matthew 26:44).

Mark tells the same scene, saying the second time that he “spake the same words” (Mark 14:39). Luke gives one prayer, made kneeling: “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). In all three Gospels the request ends with the Father’s will.

What do Jesus’ prayer habits show?

He prayed before the turning points. The Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it this way: “Jesus prays before the decisive moments of his mission: before his Father’s witness to him during his baptism and Transfiguration, and before his own fulfillment of the Father’s plan of love by his Passion.” The clearest case is the night on the mountain: “when it was day, he called unto him his disciples: and of them he chose twelve, whom also he named apostles” (Luke 6:13). The difference between those twelve and the wider group of followers is explained in apostles and disciples.

He withdrew as the crowds grew. Luke sets his retreats beside his fame: “great multitudes came together to hear, and to be healed by him”, and “he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed” (Luke 5:15–16). The verb describes a repeated action; Bengel’s Gnomon renders it “was in the habit of withdrawing”. After the feeding of the five thousand, when the crowd wanted to make him king, he sent the people away and went up a mountain to pray. In Capernaum, when the disciples found him and told him, “All men seek for thee”, he answered, “Let us go into the next towns, that I may preach there also” (Mark 1:37–38).

He had places he returned to. On the last night he went to the Mount of Olives “as he was wont” (Luke 22:39), and John says Judas knew the garden “for Jesus ofttimes resorted thither with his disciples” (John 18:2). The Catechism sums up the pattern: “Jesus often draws apart to pray in solitude, on a mountain, preferably at night.”

He gave thanks at table, at both feedings, at the Last Supper and at Emmaus. And he prayed for other people by name or by kind: for Peter, for the disciples, for all who would later believe, and on the cross for those who crucified him, as he had taught: “pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (Matthew 5:44).

He also let his disciples see him pray, and that is how one of them came to ask, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1).

If you are asked to pray aloud in front of others, Praying Out Loud is a paid course of ten lessons on how to do it.

What did Jesus teach about prayer?

When the disciple asked him to teach them to pray, he gave them the Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11:2–4); Matthew has a longer form in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:9–13), and the churches’ different endings for it are explained in why the Catholic Lord’s Prayer is different. In the same sermon he told his hearers to “enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret” (Matthew 6:6), and not to pray “as the hypocrites are” who pray “that they may be seen of men” (Matthew 6:5).

He taught that “men ought always to pray, and not to faint” (Luke 18:1), to pray in faith, “believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them” (Mark 11:24), and to forgive first: “when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any” (Mark 11:25).

Does the Bible mention Jesus praying outside the Gospels?

Yes, in two ways. The Letter to the Hebrews looks back on his prayer before the cross: “in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared” (Hebrews 5:7). And the New Testament speaks of a prayer that continues. Hebrews says he “ever liveth to make intercession” for those who come to God by him (Hebrews 7:25), and Paul writes of Christ “who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us” (Romans 8:34).

Related reading

• The fasting habits of Jesus: how often did he fast?
• Why is the Catholic Lord’s Prayer different?
• Apostles vs. disciples: what is the difference?
• The Lazarus miracle: did Jesus really raise him from the dead?
• Can Jesus be tempted? Hebrews 4:15 and the temptation in the wilderness
• Prayers before meals: traditional graces and short blessings