FK: "How do you describe what happened when Jesus prayed? Was He talking to Himself?"
No. He was praying to God the Father, to the First Person of the Holy Trinity, not to divine nature, just as He was calling on the Spirit, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, and not on divine nature.
How do we DISTINGUISH the three persons from the one divine nature? I ask because I have some experience in this area and the results were most unfortunate for me! LOL!
Under what you say above, would it be equally proper for the Father to pray to the Spirit, or for the Spirit to pray to the Father, or for either to pray to Christ? Is first, second, third "person" an order of importance?
"How do we DISTINGUISH the three persons from the one divine nature? I ask because I have some experience in this area and the results were most unfortunate for me! LOL!"
Continuing Orthodox Education!
"God is known and understood in everything in three hypostases. He holds all things and provides for all things through His Son in the Holy Spirit; and no one of Them, wherever He is invoked, is named or thought of as existing apart or separately from the two others." +Gregory of Sinai
And
"Trinity is simple unity; it is not merged together - it is three in one. The One three-hypostatical God has the three hypostases perfectly distinct in Himself." +Gregory of Sinai
And
"God is the only Being that truly is - the only eternal and immutable Being - who neither receives being from non-being nor returns to non-being; who is Tri-hypostatic and Almighty" +Gregory Palamas
And
"The transcendently and absolutely perfect Goodness is Intellect; thus what else could the which proceeds from It as from a source be except Intelligence-content or Logos? But the divine Logos is not to be understood in the same way as the human thought-form that we express orally, for that proceeds not from the intellect but from a body activated by the intellect...Thus the supreme Logos is the Son, and is so described by us, in order that we may recognize Him to be perfect in a perfect and individual hypostasis, since He comes from the Father and is in no way inferior to the Father's essence, but is indistinguishably identical with Him, although not according to hypostasis; for His distinction as hypostasis is manifest in the fact that the Logos is begotten in a divinely fitting manner from the Father." +Gregory Palamas
Happy New Year, FK!
There does seem to be an order of the person's of the trinity. The Son does as the Father wishes, the Spirit testifies not of Himself but of the Son. Yet, the three are One God. Certainly more than my little mind can comprehend!
You don't. The only Hypostasis (Person) that is distinguished for being human and divine is the Son in that within Him subsist two distinguished natures, one corporeal and human and the other one incorporeal and divine.
The distinction of the Hypostases is revealed in the so-called Divine Economy of our Salvation, as God reveals Himself as Three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, all three co-substantial (co-essential), sharing the same divinity (divine nature), all three being equally God, equally divine.
In the process of our salvation, God sends His Son to atone for us, and the Son sends the Spirit once this has been accomplished, so that the Spirit may guide us until the Son returns. But God never leaves us! It is only that Hypostatically God accomplishes different tasks that matter to our salvation.
There can never be a greater sin than to blaspheme against the Spirit (the only transgression that cannot be redeemed), yet the Spirit is often trated as the "third" in line in the West, concentrating mroe on the unified "God," and mentioning the Son more in His human nature.
I believe Kolokotronis, and others (myself included) have, in the past, given you plenty of patristic literature to ponder and easily answer your inquiries, as the Church understood them all along.
One such link is to St. John of Damascus, the last of the so-called "Desert Fathers" whose clarity, in my opinion, supercedes that of the 13th century St. Gregory Palamas.
This is what St. John Damascene says concerning the Word and the Son of God:
For where could it be, if it were to go outside Him? For inasmuch as our nature is perishable and easily dissolved, our word is also without subsistence. But since God is everlasting and perfect, He will have His Word subsistent in Him, and everlasting trod living, and possessed of all the attributes of the Begetter.
For just as our word, proceeding as it floes out of the mind, is neither wholly identical with the mind nor utterly diverse from it (for so far as it proceeds out of the mind it is different from it, while so far as it reveals the mind, it is no longer absolutely diverse from the mind, but being one in nature with the mind, it is yet to the subject diverse from it), so in the same manner also the Word of Gods in its independent subsistence is differentiated froth Him from Whom it derives its subsistence: but inasmuch as it displays in itself the same attributes as are seen in God, it is of the same nature as God.
For just as absolute perfection is contemplated in the Father, so also is it contemplated in the Word that is begotten of Him." [Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book I, Chapter VI]
Notice his first sentence: so this then one and only God is not Wordless. The creative Intellect (the Wisdom, sofia) of the Father is not without a creative Word or the Creative Spirit (something that we, made in the image and likeness of God, even if severely tarnished, understand intrinsically, since our own intellect cannot be wordless either!) in order to be expressed.