All prayers Invocations and Evocations

The term "du‘â"

In the literal sense, "du‘â" means: "to call". In general, in religious texts, "du‘â" refers precisely to the fact of calling God. In other words: "to invoke".

Du‘â has always been the favorite weapon used by Prophets and the pious to walk and to express first the deep recognition of their state of servitude but also to manifest their desire and their need to get closer to the Most High.

The Prophet (pbuh) reminded us that "the best act of worship, after reading the Quran, is invocation." He also told us that invocation is "the marrow of worship".

With these words, he informs us about the exceptional place of this act of worship which is not an act of worship like any other. It has a particular meaning and scope that we will develop

There are thus 2 types of invocations:

1/ The invocation of praise or du‘â al-’ibâda.

2/ And the invocation of request or du‘â al-isti’âna.

It is Shaykh Ibn Taymiyya who designated these two types of invocations and formulated these two names: du‘â al-‘ibâda, and du‘â al-isti‘âna which in fact take up the two terms present in the verse of Surah Al-Fâtiha in which it is said: “It is You that we worship (‘ibâda, we offer our praises to God), and it is to You that we implore help (isti‘âna, we ask God). » (Quran, Al-Fatiha, 1/4)

When we speak of “invoking”, of “making du‘â”, what immediately comes to mind is du‘â al-Isti’âna, the invocation of request. However, du‘â al-‘ibâda, this invocation of the believer addressing God directly to praise Him, is an essential invocation.

These two types of invocations to God may be different, but they are totally linked. One cannot exist without the other. If we praise God, this irremediably leads us to ask the One Who always answers the one who calls Him. Similarly, if we ask God, propriety would require that we first praise Him.

This is what the Prophet (pbuh) taught. Having heard a believer address a request to God during the prayer, he said to him: "When one of you performs the prayer, let him begin by praising, then let him make blessings on the Prophet; then, after that, let him ask for whatever he wants." (Tirmidhi)

The 2 purposes of du'a: to get closer and to free oneself

The two purposes of invocation respond to the two prerequisites necessary for living happily in this world and in the next: to seek proximity to our Creator and to preserve the freedom of His creatures.

The first purpose of du'a: TO GET CLOSER

Invocation responds to the fundamental desire of the believer who wants to get closer to God to know Him. Invocation is what brings man closest to his Creator. Certainly, God is always "as close to man as his jugular vein." but man, very often, allows himself to be distracted from God.

God knows. He created us with our weaknesses and our shortcomings. But if the human being can thus lose the advantage of this proximity that he potentially has with the Most High, He can still find it again through invocation. If he so desires.

Thus, God lets us know that the universe that surrounds us was not created in vain: "I have not created the Djinns and Men except that they worship Me, I expect neither subsistence nor food from them. » (Dhariyat 51/56-57)

And according to Ibn ‘Abbas, the meaning of the word “worship Me” (‘ibada) cited in this verse is that of the knowledge of God. God has therefore created us for this sole objective: Man must go towards the Knowledge of God.

How? Quite simply by this first worship which is invocation!

This is why our Prophet (pbuh) tells us that "invocation (du'a) is worship itself." (Tirmidhi) So knowing God is worshiping Him, and worshiping Him is invoking Him. Invocation is the expression of our desire to know and recognize Him.

God is thus pleased with us when we invoke Him with humility and recognize His Omnipotence. As He is displeased with us when we abandon invocations because this reflects this ungrateful feeling of self-sufficiency vis-à-vis the One Who has given us everything.

The second purpose of du'a: TO FREE ONESELF

In adversity or not, man, who is in permanent lack, needs to express and externalize his pains and anxieties which continually gnaw at him. Man, by nature, needs to express his weakness, he would like to be recognized by paying attention to his complaints. It is human, precisely. But it is rare that the expression and recognition of our weaknesses rhymes with preservation of our pride.

The Believer, who rejects any form of servitude to anyone other than God, therefore finds in invocation a natural and healthy space that allows him to express this need for love, concern and appeasement that our hearts and souls need.

The only weakness that the believer can certainly claim without any shame is the one that he expresses in his intimacy and with love, before the One, his Creator.

Doing it towards God allows him to avoid doing it too often towards his neighbor and thus protects him from any unhealthy attempt at domination. It is therefore the submission of Man to the One that makes him a free being.

The bond of hearts and souls through du’a

Among the noblest and most meritorious ways of invoking God is invoking on behalf of others. It is a way of learning to step aside, to decenter oneself even when one is in need.

It is a type of invocation that God cites in the Quran:

When Abraham said: “Our Lord, forgive me, my parents and the believers on the day we shall be accountable.” (Quran, Abraham, 14/41)

رَبَّنَا ٱغۡفِرۡ لِي وَلِوَٰلِدَيَّ وَلِلۡمُؤۡمِنِينَ يَوۡمَ يَقُومُ ٱلۡحِسَابُ ٤١

Or when God said to the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh): “And ask forgiveness for yourself and for the believing men and believing women.” (Quran, Muhammad, 47/19)

فَٱعۡلَمۡ أَنَّهُۥ لَآ إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا ٱللَّهُ وَٱسۡتَغۡفِرۡ لِذَنۢبِكَ وَلِلۡمُؤۡمِنِينَ وَٱلۡمُؤۡمِنَٰتِۗ وَٱللَّهُيَعۡلَمُ مُتَقَلَّبَكُمۡ وَمَثۡوَىٰكُمۡ ١٩
 

And also when we all say in our ritual prayers during the tashahud: "Peace be upon us and upon the righteous servants."

There are actually three purposes in this type of invocation for others:

1/ It strengthens the bonds of love between believers of all times and helps to strengthen the bonds of kinship, marital ties, etc. as it is said in this verse: "Our Lord, forgive us and our brothers who preceded us in Faith." (Quran, Al-Hashr, 59/10)

…رَبَّنَا ٱغۡفِرۡ لَنَا وَلِإِخۡوَٰنِنَا ٱلَّذِينَ سَبَقُونَا بِٱلۡإِيمَٰنِ… ١٠
 

2/ Invoking for the pious is also a way of expressing the wish to be "with those whom God has blessed among the prophets, the truthful, the martyrs and the righteous." (Quran, An-Nisa', 4/69)

…مَعَ ٱلَّذِينَ أَنۡعَمَ ٱللَّهُ عَلَيۡهِم مِّنَ ٱلنَّبِيِّ‍ۧنَ وَٱلصِّدِّيقِينَ وَٱلشُّهَدَآءِوَٱلصَّٰلِحِينَۚ وَحَسُنَ أُوْلَٰٓئِكَ رَفِيقٗا ٦٩
 

3/ This invocation is finally a gratitude towards these beautiful people who have done so much for Islam and invoking for these people is to grant ourselves a pious company in our journey towards God.

So invoking for others creates a bond with our brothers and sisters in faith, living or dead, present or not. This demonstrates our desire to belong and to live intimately in tune with this community of faith by going beyond all the limits of time and space. It is a mark of gratitude, generosity, love and exceptional solidarity of the believer who seeks the company of the prophets and the most virtuous beings.

What is the difference between evocation and invocation?

In French, we have difficulty perceiving the difference between evocation and invocation which nevertheless corresponds to two different ways of calling God.

Evocation, in the general and common sense of the term, is the mental representation of an object in its absence. We thus evoke an absent person, a past vacation or a dish that we enjoyed.

The ability to evoke is essential to allow everyone to memorize, understand, reflect, or even creative imagination. Evocation is therefore based on mental images that we construct in our heads. Mental processes thus follow the following path:

External perception (by using our senses) -> Internal evocation -> Meditation/Reflection -> Action

We draw up the educational and cognitive profile of a person based on their ability to evoke, and not only on their ability to use their senses correctly.

Moreover, we are almost all at the same time "auditory" and "visual", but we differentiate ourselves in the extent, speed and manner of constructing mental images in our heads (and our hearts?).

Perception and evocation

We all know that there is a big difference between the reality we perceive and the evocation we make of this perception.

The path of evocation (reality->present perception of reality->evocation of our past perception) is an intimate and very subjective path. Two people who observe the same object will certainly not see the same thing. And if they have to evoke this object in its absence, they will certainly not have the same evocation of the object.

Because it will depend not only on a subjective perception of their sense but also and above all on the feelings and emotions that occurred during this perception.

And the more our brain is built, the more reality escapes us, because it becomes only a construction, the fruit of multiple interpretations based on experience, prejudices or knowledge that has accumulated and that makes us evolve in the way we perceive and evoke the world.

An inability to evoke?

Some people, when they perceive the real world, sometimes feel unable to trigger what would result from evocation. This happens when we refuse to seek the deep meaning of things, their essence which often reminds us of our responsibilities and forces us to reflect on the primary meaning of this life.

Out of pride, fear, ignorance or carelessness, we sink into ease and thus prefer to avoid evoking. And we sometimes take refuge in all-out action to compensate for our unconsciousness. This is what we could call a spiritual inability to meditate through permanent agitation.

This is often the case when we are only in reaction to the multiple events of life. No longer understanding the meaning and usefulness of meditation, we no longer perceive creation as a world of signs calling for the remembrance of God. The world is only a multitude of stimuli making us act and react constantly. Absorbed by the worries and trials of our lives, we go from one crisis to another, from one anxiety to another without trying to understand the deep meaning, without being able to give meaning to all of this.

Sometimes it is overflowing and poorly managed emotional reactions that will prevent us from evoking the deep meaning of things. The person thus finds himself as if paralyzed and lost in his emotionality.

It is an inability to meditate due to excess of emotion, a feverish agitation that is the translation of an escape of the one who is incapable of seeing in his life the presence of the divine. This is evident when we conceive of ourselves only in action and we think with pretension that, only, our actions found reality. Or when we no longer control our emotions, nor our passions and when we end up letting ourselves be governed only by them.

Such a type of behavior does not allow for either invocation or evocation. Because to evoke and invoke, we must learn to listen to the world and learn to decenter ourselves, learn to manage our ego. And it is by multiplying invocation as well as evocation that we educate ourselves to be in such dispositions.

Evocation and Invocation, two ways of responding to one and the same call

These two words, invocation and evocation, have the same Latin root (vocation): vocare in Latin which means “to call”, the same meaning as the Arabic word du ‘â.

In the religious and Islamic sense, it is therefore the call to/for God. The two words – invocations and evocations – differ in the place of the call but not in the recipient of the call (God).

For one it is “IN vocare” (invocation), and the other it is “EX vocare” (evocation). One is the call from within. And the other is the call from without:

– The call to God from the heart (inside), invocation.

– And the call to God from creation (outside), evocation.

Invocation is internal (in vocare) because it consists of bringing our qualities to life from meditation through the heart, through a direct relationship, we invoke in our heart the Most High that we would like to approach. From the heart, we therefore call upon our interiority (his fitra) to access the knowledge of God and thus have another perception of the world around us. It is a movement from the inside (heart) to the outside (creation).

Evocation on the other hand is external (ex vocare), it consists of using one's external senses (observation, listening, speech or other) to perceive and understand the signs of creation, and thus the presence of God in the world and to make it manifest in one's heart. It is therefore, here, a movement from the outside (creation) to the inside (heart).

Invocation and evocation therefore both have the same objective: To go towards the knowledge of God by opening oneself to His Light in one's heart (invocation) or by meditating on His signs in Creation (evocation).

Why the denier can neither invoke nor evoke

When God decides on the loss of one of His creatures who has decided to deny His Creator, God ensures that this denier can neither invoke nor evoke.

For this, God removes from him all the means of his invocation (invocare), that is to say any possibility of using his heart and his understanding that God has decided to seal.

And God also removes from him all the means of evocation (exvocare), that is to say any possibility of understanding the world because his senses, his sight, his perception of the world are totally veiled.

This is the meaning of this verse where God says: "God has sealed their heart and their understanding. And a veil blocks their vision… (Quran, Al-Baqara, 2/7)

خَتَمَ ٱللَّهُ عَلَىٰ قُلُوبِهِمۡ وَعَلَىٰ سَمۡعِهِمۡۖ وَعَلَىٰٓ أَبۡصَٰرِهِمۡ غِشَٰوَةٞۖ وَلَهُمۡ عَذَابٌعَظِيمٞ ٧
 

The path of balanced knowledge of God through his invocation and evocation is therefore done with the help of these three means that we must preserve:

1/ THE HEART: With meditation in the light of hearts by meditating and praising his Lord

2/ CREATION: With meditation on the signs of creation by imploring and thanking the Creator.

3/ THE QURAN: It is the Book of discernment, sign and light at the same time, Revelation is there to remind us of the method and the path that we must take to live this balance and harmony.

The spiritual breathing of the believer is therefore found in these movements of aspiration by evocation and expiration by invocation. The believer thus walks by nourishing himself with the signs of God in the world that make his heart live which, itself, by its light, will radiate its reality.

Invocations and evocations are in fact only calls to Him which respond to the call of His word (in the Quran), to the call of His light (in our hearts) and to the call of His signs (in creation).

YM

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