Prayer

by Hans Urs von Balthasar

This simple thing is also the greatest thing. The simple Yes to the will of heaven is precisely what the Lord’s Prayer has just yearned for in saying “Thy kingdom come”. As for the will of the “Father in heaven”, it is always completely clear and transparent, simple and intelligible to the simple heart. At the same time it is unfathomably rich and bountiful since it is the will of the infinite God. It is also the will of all those in heaven who share his will, all who, together, enter into the Father’s loving will in all its concrete dimensions, which the Church praying on earth is to realize. People are only rarely aware of this when they pray. Unless they are real mystics who actually encounter heaven’s inhabitants—angels, saints, the Mother of the Lord, or the Son himself—they are inclined to act as if they were encountering God in a solitude which is total on both sides, God’s and theirs; as if they were alone in approaching God, alone in trying to come to grips with his word and law. This is wrong in both respects. A person does not leave his place in the choir of the praying Church when he goes to his room to contemplate; in fact, as we shall see, he simply carries on the Church’s liturgy in another, no less real and effective form. Nor, in contemplation, does he encounter the Word of