Prayer

by Hans Urs von Balthasar

the divine Word, the Spirit does not splinter into multiplicity but gathers all multiplicity into one.

Christian contemplation is founded entirely on the doctrine of the Trinity.

Mysteries such as these are not merely theoretical and theological; they are thoroughly practical. It makes a great difference to the act of contemplation whether I see myself as an isolated subject, who, albeit assisted by God’s grace, endeavors to understand something of

the mysteries of revelation; or whether, in faith, I have the conviction that my inadequate attempt to understand is supported by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit dwelling within me, that my acts of worship, petition and thanksgiving are borne along and remodeled by the Spirit’s infinite and eternal acts, in that ineffable union by which al...

l...

“for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words”,

by calling Abba, Father, not somewhere outside or above us, but actually in us and from within us. This cry is heard by him who “searches the hearts of men”, who “knows what is the mind

of the Spirit”, as if the Spirit’s cry were the cry of the ...

would never occur to a praying Christian to embrace Quietism...

this indwelling, to give up his own calling on God, simply letting the Spirit pray within him. The Christian revelation never points in this direction; on the contrary it con...

the latter’s own energy and personal quality is affirmed and taken up into the all-embracing activity...

“If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit”,

The man who knows of the fountain of God’s truth and love which is continually welling up at the center of his being will feel compelled to keep returning thither to cleanse, renew and refresh his whole being.

He knows that he can only be responsible for the world in a truly manly way in terms of external action provided that, interiorly, with regard to God, he is a defenseless child, open to the word of the Spirit, living by the intimacy of the “pure spiritual milk” and “tasting the kindness of the Lord”

He who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. . . . And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son”

In the foregoing we have indicated the conditions, on God’s side, which underlie the possibility of Christian contemplation. There is the Father who predestines and chooses us and adopts us as his children; the Son who interprets the Father to us and gives him to us in his self-surrender unto death and the mystery of the bread; there is the Spirit who implants God’s life in our souls and makes it known.

In the liturgy he is entirely a member of the community: all face toward the altar, toward God, and voice the same cry of thanksgiving, petition and worship. Even in private vocal prayer the believer uses the formulas, or at least the forms, of ecclesial prayer. But in contemplation he is simply an

open ear to the ever-new word of God. Here God is speaking to this person and no other; to this beggar at the Temple gate who receives some gift, this person who is spiritually blind and lame and is to be healed, this disciple, listening to the Master. He must be really ready and willing to be this particular individual; he must not take refuge behind the barricades of ecclesiastical anonymity for fear of this encounter. The whole glory of this prayer is that, here, the very same personal encounter is meant to take place as in the Lord’s

earthly...

And just as his life is formed by the community’s ecclesial praxis, so his spiritual life is fashioned by preaching, dogma, and the a priori willingness inwardly to accept new definitions on the part of the Church’s magisterium.

It is the Church which opens up the infinite perspectives of God and introduces us to them.

for in the Church every baptized person participates in the most intimate nuptial secret between Bride and Bridegroom, though at his own particular stage of development—

Love neither divides nor is

dissipated.

He who prays according to the Church’s mind knows that he needs solitude, even in an external sense, if he is to pray fruitfully. There are of course ordinary psychological reasons for this, enabling him, after all the damaging and deadening distractions of the world’s hyperactivity, to recollect himself, “gather himself

together”.

Best of all is the silence of one’s own room, wher...

from interruption, uninhibited and free to adopt whatever posture and gesture of prayer is found congenial and fruitful, kneeling on the floo...

personam Ecclesiae gerere,

In the Church there is no such thing as loveless, heartless isolation. God brings the isolated together, in the most diverse ways, in prayer itself and in the apostolate, in everyday life, in the liturgy, at work, in the family, in friendship and in the casual acquaintance which, however, can be a source of strength for years

to come. He draws together all the isolated who bear within them the image of the Virgin Mother, the Church, and who recognize each other by this imprint.

Paul’s “we do not know how to pray as we ought” has probably never been as relevant as it is today. We live at a time of spiritual drought. The images of the world which in former times spoke of God have become obscure ciphers and riddles, the words of scripture have been whittled away by rationalistic skeptics, human hearts have been so

crushed and trampled on in this age of the robot that they

are no longer sure that contemplation...

Prayer finds them basically full of doubt, insecurity and despair; they creep along close to the ground and dare not stand upright. They feel drawn to every negative act; ready not only to doubt God but also to resist him, perhaps even to hate him for letting the world carry on as it does, for being so high and aloof, above the need to intervene. For he is so sure of himself that he can expose his children to fear and darkness in this vast, unbounded universe, giving them no hope but nothingness, no consolation but the certainty of death. . . . Nowadays the temptation to say No, to yield to weariness, is very stron...

It is here that the idea of the praying Church comes to our aid. Prayer, contemplation, is not only possible: in the Church it is a reali...

There is one place in God’s creation where the world is ceaselessly in conversation with God; here, by the power which radiates

from above, the earth opens itself to a heaven which already stands open to earth. And this open heaven is the eternal Son of the Father, who has been given to the earth and desires to bring creation home to the Father like a bridegroom his bride. The earth’s open receptivity is that of the Bride in her willingness to yield to her Lord’s love, to accept it as her law and commandment, to put into practice the “on earth as in heaven”.

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 ...

God in abstraction, isolated from the multitude of those who are already in the coming kingdom of heaven. If he so wishes, all his brothers and sisters (living and dead) in whom the kingdom of God has actually come or is coming, can be as clo...

What he is endeavoring to bring about, namely, the Yes to the Father’s will, has already been achieved by a vast company to which he belongs inseparably. For it is only in this Yes that God’s kingdom can come. And as he prays, all who have ever heard and uttered this Yes, and all who eve...

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 a...

And so this vast, living kingdom of heaven watches over transitory time, endeavoring to carry out a wealth of ideas, intentio...

“Let it be to me according to your word”—

Many Christians fail to grasp that the reality of the kingdom of heaven is eternal and thus not temporally “future”. What, in prayer, we yearn for, the “coming” for which we plead, is not something as yet nonexistent, something we have to introduce into our existing life by means of prayer and effort, like other temporal and historical values. It is the eternally Real; we, who are unreal, need to allow it to conquer us. So the reality of contemplation is the eternal reality of the kingdom of heaven; through contemplation it also becomes a reality here and now, for mankind and for the world.

We do not build the kingdom of God on earth by our own efforts (however assisted by grace); the most we can do through genuine prayer, is to make as much room as possible, in ourselves and in the world, for the kingdom of God, so that its energies can go to work.

It contemplates God’s truth and opens itself to his word. In fact this receptivity for the word of God constitutes the central act of the Church’s liturgy, in which we can discern two phases: the reception of the Word as word, and

the reception of the Word as flesh. Receiving the Word as word, which takes place in the first part of the Mass, is the precondition for accepting the Word as flesh, the action which unfolds from the offertory, via the consecration, to communion.

remember the most important purpose of Holy Mass, namely, to be a memorial, an anamnesis of the Lord, and not only of his suffering and death but, within that context, of his whole life and being. “Do this in remembrance of me,” he says, without restricting the scope of the words.

In its solemn prayer in