Prayer

by Hans Urs von Balthasar

Any Yes uttered on earth, for instance the Virgin’s act in Nazareth or at the foot of the cross, is now the fulfillment of God’s will in heaven, the fulfillment of the kingdom of heaven; it becomes, for the person praying on earth, a lightening of the load, an invitation, a help, and also, perhaps, an insistent challenge. Through some word of the gospel I may find myself confronted by someone, my own mother perhaps, or a saint with whom I have a close relationship, a deceased friend, a priest, a nun, a martyr, to remind me or show me the reality of the situation. People are accustomed to think of the “merit” of others’ prayers and sufferings in far too anonymous and sacramental terms, describing them as the Church’s “treasury of prayer”; we pay too little attention to the fact that, in contemplation, the communion of saints also operates in a personal and expressly individual way.