"Abba, Father" (Mk I4:36). In 1966 Joachim Jeremias wrote ... from which I should like to quote two essential insights

 

Lent Reading.

Dipping into Pope Benedict, Jesus of Nazareth,
 is like the depth experience of the Branson flying submarine to be capable of diving seven miles underwater to the deepest points in the ocean...

This brings us to one final point regarding Jesus' prayer, to its actual interpretative key, namely, the form of address: "Abba, Father" (Mk I4:36). In 1966 Joachim Jeremias wrote an important article about the use of this term in Jesus' prayer, from which I should like to quote two essential insights: "Whereas there is not a single instance of God being addressed as Abba in the literature of Jewish prayer, Jesus always addressed him in this way (with the exception of the cry from the Cross, Mark 15:34 and parallel passages). So we have here a quite unmistakable characteristic of the ipsissima vox Jesu" (Abba, p. 57). Moreover, Jeremias shows that this word Abba belongs to the language of children-that it is the way a child addresses his father within the family. "To the Jewish mind it would have been disrespectful and therefore inconceivable to address God with this familiar word. For Jesus to venture to take this step was something new and unheard of. He spoke to God like a child to his father ... Jesus' use of Abba in addressing God reveals the heart of his relationship with God" (p. 62). It is therefore quite mistaken on the part of some theologians to suggest that the man Jesus was addressing the Trinitarian God in the prayer on the Mount of Olives. No, it is the Son speaking here, having subsumed the fullness of man's will into himself and transformed it into the will of the Son.

Pope Benedict xvi, Jesus of Nazareth Gethsemane, pp.I6I-2