Part 3 (2/2)

The fact that Luke places the Our Father in the context of Jesus' own praying is therefore significant. Jesus thereby involves us in his own prayer; he leads us into the interior dialogue of triune love; he draws our human hards.h.i.+ps deep into G.o.d's heart, as it were. This also means, however, that the words of the Our Father are signposts to interior prayer, they provide a basic direction for our being, and they aim to configure us to the image of the Son. The meaning of the Our Father goes much further than the mere provision of a prayer text. It aims to form our being, to train us in the inner att.i.tude of Jesus (cf. Phil 2:5).

This has two different implications for our interpretation of the Our Father. First of all, it is important to listen as accurately as possible to Jesus' words as transmitted to us in Scripture. We must strive to recognize the thoughts Jesus wished to pa.s.s on to us in these words. But we must also keep in mind that the Our Father originates from his own praying, from the Son's dialogue with the Father. This means that it reaches down into depths far beyond the words. It embraces the whole compa.s.s of man's being in all ages and can therefore never be fully fathomed by a purely historical exegesis, however important this may be.

The great men and women of prayer throughout the centuries were privileged to receive an interior union with the Lord that enabled them to descend into the depths beyond the word. They are therefore able to unlock for us the hidden treasures of prayer. And we may be sure that each of us, along with our totally personal relations.h.i.+p with G.o.d, is received into, and sheltered within, this prayer. Again and again, each one of us with his mens, mens, his own spirit, must go out to meet, open himself to, and submit to the guidance of the his own spirit, must go out to meet, open himself to, and submit to the guidance of the vox, vox, the word that comes to us from the Son. In this way his own heart will be opened, and each individual will learn the particular way in which the Lord wants to pray with him. the word that comes to us from the Son. In this way his own heart will be opened, and each individual will learn the particular way in which the Lord wants to pray with him.

The Our Father has been transmitted to us in a shorter form in Luke, whereas it comes down to us in Matthew in the version that the Church has adopted for purposes of prayer. The discussion about which text is more original is not superfluous, but neither is it the main issue. In both versions we are praying with Jesus, and we are grateful that Matthew's version, with its seven pet.i.tions, explicitly unfolds things that Luke seems in part only to touch upon.

Before we enter into the detailed exposition, let us now very briefly look at the structure of the Our Father as Matthew transmits it. It comprises an initial salutation and seven pet.i.tions. Three are ”thou-pet.i.tions,” while four are ”we-pet.i.tions.” The first three pet.i.tions concern the cause of G.o.d himself in this world; the four following pet.i.tions concern our hopes, needs, and hards.h.i.+ps. The relations.h.i.+p between the two sets of pet.i.tions in the Our Father could be compared to the relations.h.i.+p between the two tablets of the Decalogue. Essentially they are explications of the two parts of the great commandment to love G.o.d and our neighbor-in other words, they are directions toward the path of love.

The Our Father, then, like the Ten Commandments, begins by establis.h.i.+ng the primacy of G.o.d, which then leads naturally to a consideration of the right way of being human. Here, too, the primary concern is the path of love, which is at the same time a path of conversion. If man is to pet.i.tion G.o.d in the right way, he must stand in the truth. And the truth is: first G.o.d, first his Kingdom (cf. Mt 6:33). The first thing we must do is step outside ourselves and open ourselves to G.o.d. Nothing can turn out right if our relation to G.o.d is not rightly ordered. For this reason, the Our Father begins with G.o.d and then, from that starting point, shows us the way toward being human. At the end we descend to the ultimate threat besetting man, for whom the Evil one lies in wait-we may recall the image of the apocalyptic dragon that wages war against those ”who keep the commandments of G.o.d and bear testimony to Jesus” (Rev 12:17).

Yet the beginning remains present throughout: Our Father-we know that he is with us to hold us in his hand and save us. In his book of spiritual exercises, Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, the Superior General of the Jesuits, tells the story of a staretz, staretz, or spiritual advisor of the Eastern Church, who yearned ”to begin the Our Father with the last verse, so that one might become worthy to finish the prayer with the initial words-'Our Father.'” In this way, the or spiritual advisor of the Eastern Church, who yearned ”to begin the Our Father with the last verse, so that one might become worthy to finish the prayer with the initial words-'Our Father.'” In this way, the staretz staretz explained, we would be following the path to Easter. ”We begin in the desert with the temptation, we return to Egypt, then we travel the path of the Exodus, through the stations of forgiveness and G.o.d's manna, and by G.o.d's will we attain the promised land, the kingdom of G.o.d, where he communicates to us the mystery of his name: 'Our Father'” ( explained, we would be following the path to Easter. ”We begin in the desert with the temptation, we return to Egypt, then we travel the path of the Exodus, through the stations of forgiveness and G.o.d's manna, and by G.o.d's will we attain the promised land, the kingdom of G.o.d, where he communicates to us the mystery of his name: 'Our Father'” (Der osterliche Weg, pp. 65f.). pp. 65f.).

Let both these ways, the way of ascent and the way of descent, be a reminder that the Our Father is always a prayer of Jesus and that communion with him is what opens it up for us. We pray to the Father in heaven, whom we know through his Son. And that means that Jesus is always in the background during the pet.i.tions, as we will see in the course of our detailed exposition of the prayer. A final point-because the Our Father is a prayer of Jesus, it is a Trinitarian prayer: We pray with Christ through the Holy Spirit to the Father.

OUR F FATHER W WHO A ART IN H HEAVEN.

We begin with the salutation ”Father.” Reinhold Schneider writes apropos of this in his exposition of the Our Father: ”The Our Father begins with a great consolation: we are allowed to say 'Father.' This one word contains the whole history of redemption. We are allowed to say 'Father,' because the Son was our brother and has revealed the Father to us; because, thanks to what Christ has done, we have once more become children of G.o.d” (Das Vaterunser, p. 10). It is true, of course, that contemporary men and women have difficulty experiencing the great consolation of the word father father immediately, since the experience of the father is in many cases either completely absent or is obscured by inadequate examples of fatherhood. immediately, since the experience of the father is in many cases either completely absent or is obscured by inadequate examples of fatherhood.

We must therefore let Jesus teach us what father father really means. In Jesus' discourses, the Father appears as the source of all good, as the measure of the rect.i.tude (perfection) of man. ”But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good” (Mt 5:4445). The love that endures ”to the end” (Jn 13:1), which the Lord fulfilled on the Cross in praying for his enemies, shows us the essence of the Father. He is this love. Because Jesus brings it to completion, he is entirely ”Son,” and he invites us to become ”sons” according to this criterion. really means. In Jesus' discourses, the Father appears as the source of all good, as the measure of the rect.i.tude (perfection) of man. ”But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good” (Mt 5:4445). The love that endures ”to the end” (Jn 13:1), which the Lord fulfilled on the Cross in praying for his enemies, shows us the essence of the Father. He is this love. Because Jesus brings it to completion, he is entirely ”Son,” and he invites us to become ”sons” according to this criterion.

Let us consider a further text as well. The Lord reminds us that fathers do not give their children stones when they ask for bread. He then goes on to say: ”If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Mt 7:9ff.). Luke specifies the ”good gifts” that the Father gives; he says ”how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Lk 11:13). This means that the gift of G.o.d is G.o.d himself. The ”good things” that he gives us are himself. This reveals in a surprising way what prayer is really all about: It is not about this or that, but about G.o.d's desire to offer us the gift of himself-that is the gift of all gifts, the ”one thing necessary.” Prayer is a way of gradually purifying and correcting our wishes and of slowly coming to realize what we really need: G.o.d and his Spirit.

When the Lord teaches us to recognize the essence of G.o.d the Father through love of enemies, and to find ”perfection” in that love so as to become ”sons” ourselves, the connection between Father and Son becomes fully evident. It then becomes plain that the figure of Jesus is the mirror in which we come to know who G.o.d is and what he is like: through the Son we find the Father. At the Last Supper, when Philip asks Jesus to ”show us the Father,” Jesus says, ”He who sees me sees the Father” (Jn 14:8f.). ”Lord, show us the Father,” we say again and again to Jesus, and the answer again and again is the Son himself. Through him, and only through him, do we come to know the Father. And in this way the criterion of true fatherliness is made clear. The Our Father does not project a human image onto heaven, but shows us from heaven-from Jesus-what we as human beings can and should be like.

Now, however, we must look even more closely, because we need to realize that, according to Jesus' message, there are two sides of G.o.d's Fatherhood for us to see. First of all, G.o.d is our Father in the sense that he is our Creator. We belong to him because he has created us. ”Being” as such comes from him and is consequently good; it derives from G.o.d. This is especially true of human beings. Psalm 33:15 says in the Latin translation, ”He who has fas.h.i.+oned the hearts of all, considers all their works.” The idea that G.o.d has created each individual human being is essential to the Bible's image of man. Every human being is unique, and willed as such by G.o.d. Every individual is known to him. In this sense, by virtue of creation itself man is the ”child” of G.o.d in a special way, and G.o.d is his true Father. To describe man as G.o.d's image is another way of expressing this idea.

This brings us to the second dimension of G.o.d's Fatherhood. There is a unique sense in which Christ is the ”image of G.o.d” (2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15). The Fathers of the Church therefore say that when G.o.d created man ”in his image,” he looked toward the Christ who was to come, and created man according to the image of the ”new Adam,” the man who is the criterion of the human. Above all, though, Jesus is ”the Son” in the strict sense-he is of one substance with the Father. He wants to draw all of us into his humanity and so into his Sons.h.i.+p, into his total belonging to G.o.d.

This gives the concept of being G.o.d's children a dynamic quality: We are not ready-made children of G.o.d from the start, but we are meant to become so increasingly by growing more and more deeply in communion with Jesus. Our sons.h.i.+p turns out to be identical with following Christ. To name G.o.d as Father thus becomes a summons to us: to live as a ”child,” as a son or daughter. ”All that is mine is thine,” Jesus says in his high-priestly prayer to the Father (Jn 17:10), and the father says the same thing to the elder brother of the Prodigal Son (Lk 15:31). The word father father is an invitation to live from our awareness of this reality. Hence, too, the delusion of false emanc.i.p.ation, which marked the beginning of mankind's history of sin, is overcome. Adam, heeding the words of the serpent, wants to become G.o.d himself and to shed his need for G.o.d. We see that to be G.o.d's child is not a matter of dependency, but rather of standing in the relation of love that sustains man's existence and gives it meaning and grandeur. is an invitation to live from our awareness of this reality. Hence, too, the delusion of false emanc.i.p.ation, which marked the beginning of mankind's history of sin, is overcome. Adam, heeding the words of the serpent, wants to become G.o.d himself and to shed his need for G.o.d. We see that to be G.o.d's child is not a matter of dependency, but rather of standing in the relation of love that sustains man's existence and gives it meaning and grandeur.

One last question remains: Is G.o.d also mother? The Bible does compare G.o.d's love with the love of a mother: ”As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you” (Is 66:13). ”Can a woman forget her suckling child, that she should have no compa.s.sion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you” (Is 49:15). The mystery of G.o.d's maternal love is expressed with particular power in the Hebrew word rahamim rahamim. Etymologically, this word means ”womb,” but it was later used to mean divine compa.s.sion for man, G.o.d's mercy. The Old Testament constantly uses the names of organs of the human body to describe basic human att.i.tudes or inner dispositions of G.o.d, just as today we use heart heart or or brain brain when referring to some aspect of our own existence. In this way the Old Testament portrays the basic att.i.tudes of our existence, not with abstract concepts, but in the image language of the body. The womb is the most concrete expression for the intimate interrelatedness of two lives and of loving concern for the dependent, helpless creature whose whole being, body and soul, nestles in the mother's womb. The image language of the body furnishes us, then, with a deeper understanding of G.o.d's dispositions toward man than any conceptual language could. when referring to some aspect of our own existence. In this way the Old Testament portrays the basic att.i.tudes of our existence, not with abstract concepts, but in the image language of the body. The womb is the most concrete expression for the intimate interrelatedness of two lives and of loving concern for the dependent, helpless creature whose whole being, body and soul, nestles in the mother's womb. The image language of the body furnishes us, then, with a deeper understanding of G.o.d's dispositions toward man than any conceptual language could.

Although this use of language derived from man's bodiliness inscribes motherly love into the image of G.o.d, it is nonetheless also true that G.o.d is never named or addressed as mother, either in the Old or in the New Testament. ”Mother” in the Bible is an image but not a t.i.tle for G.o.d. Why not? We can only tentatively seek to understand. Of course, G.o.d is neither a man nor a woman, but simply G.o.d, the Creator of man and woman. The mother-deities that completely surrounded the people of Israel and the New Testament Church create a picture of the relation between G.o.d and the world that is completely opposed to the biblical image of G.o.d. These deities always, and probably inevitably, imply some form of pantheism in which the difference between Creator and creature disappears. Looked at in these terms, the being of things and of people cannot help looking like an emanation from the maternal womb of being, which, in entering time, takes shape in the multiplicity of existing things.

By contrast, the image of the Father was and is apt for expressing the otherness of Creator and creature and the sovereignty of his creative act. Only by excluding the mother-deities could the Old Testament bring its image of G.o.d, the pure transcendence of G.o.d, to maturity. But even if we cannot provide any absolutely compelling arguments, the prayer language of the entire Bible remains normative for us, in which, as we have seen, while there are some fine images of maternal love, ”mother” is not used as a t.i.tle or a form of address for G.o.d. We make our pet.i.tions in the way that Jesus, with Holy Scripture in the background, taught us to pray, and not as we happen to think or want. Only thus do we pray properly.

Finally, we need to consider the word our our. Jesus alone was fully ent.i.tled to say ”my Father,” because he alone is truly G.o.d's only-begotten Son, of one substance with the Father. By contrast, the rest of us have to say ”our Father.” Only within the ”we” of the disciples can we call G.o.d ”Father,” because only through communion with Jesus Christ do we truly become ”children of G.o.d.” In this sense, the word our our is really rather demanding: It requires that we step out of the closed circle of our ”I.” It requires that we surrender ourselves to communion with the other children of G.o.d. It requires, then, that we strip ourselves of what is merely our own, of what divides. It requires that we accept the other, the others-that we open our ear and our heart to them. When we say the word is really rather demanding: It requires that we step out of the closed circle of our ”I.” It requires that we surrender ourselves to communion with the other children of G.o.d. It requires, then, that we strip ourselves of what is merely our own, of what divides. It requires that we accept the other, the others-that we open our ear and our heart to them. When we say the word our, our, we say Yes to the living Church in which the Lord wanted to gather his new family. In this sense, the Our Father is at once a fully personal and a thoroughly ecclesial prayer. In praying the Our Father, we pray totally with our own heart, but at the same time we pray in communion with the whole family of G.o.d, with the living and the dead, with men of all conditions, cultures, and races. The Our Father overcomes all boundaries and makes us one family. we say Yes to the living Church in which the Lord wanted to gather his new family. In this sense, the Our Father is at once a fully personal and a thoroughly ecclesial prayer. In praying the Our Father, we pray totally with our own heart, but at the same time we pray in communion with the whole family of G.o.d, with the living and the dead, with men of all conditions, cultures, and races. The Our Father overcomes all boundaries and makes us one family.

This word our our also gives us the key to understanding the words that come next: ”Who art in heaven.” With these words, we are not pus.h.i.+ng G.o.d the Father away to some distant planet. Rather, we are testifying to the fact that, while we have different earthly fathers, we all come from one single Father, who is the measure and source of all fatherhood. As Saint Paul says: ”I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named” (Eph 3:1415). In the background we hear the Lord himself speaking: ”Call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven” (Mt 23:9). also gives us the key to understanding the words that come next: ”Who art in heaven.” With these words, we are not pus.h.i.+ng G.o.d the Father away to some distant planet. Rather, we are testifying to the fact that, while we have different earthly fathers, we all come from one single Father, who is the measure and source of all fatherhood. As Saint Paul says: ”I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named” (Eph 3:1415). In the background we hear the Lord himself speaking: ”Call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven” (Mt 23:9).

G.o.d's fatherhood is more real than human fatherhood, because he is the ultimate source of our being; because he has thought and willed us from all eternity; because he gives us our true paternal home, which is eternal. And if earthly fatherhood divides, heavenly fatherhood unites. Heaven, then, means that other divine summit from which we all come and to which we are all meant to return. The fatherhood that is ”in heaven” points us toward the greater ”we” that transcends all boundaries, breaks down all walls, and creates peace.

HALLOWED B BE T THY N NAME.

The first pet.i.tion of the Our Father reminds us of the second commandment of the Decalogue: Thou shalt not speak the name of the Lord thy G.o.d in vain. But what is this ”name of G.o.d”? When we speak of G.o.d's name, we see in our mind's eye the picture of Moses in the desert beholding a thornbush that burns but is not consumed. At first it is curiosity that prompts him to go and take a closer look at this mysterious sight, but then a voice calls to him from out of the bush, and this voice says to him: ”I am the G.o.d of your fathers, the G.o.d of Abraham, the G.o.d of Isaac, and the G.o.d of Jacob” (Ex 3:6). This G.o.d sends Moses back to Egypt with the task of leading the people of Israel out of that country into the Promised Land. Moses is charged with demanding in the name of G.o.d that Pharaoh let Israel go.

But in the world of Moses' time there were many G.o.ds. Moses therefore asks the name of this G.o.d that will prove his special authority vis-a-vis the G.o.ds. In this respect, the idea of the divine name belongs first of all to the polytheistic world, in which this G.o.d, too, has to give himself a name. But the G.o.d who calls Moses is truly G.o.d, and G.o.d in the strict and true sense is not plural. G.o.d is by essence one. For this reason he cannot enter into the world of the G.o.ds as one among many; he cannot have one name among others.

G.o.d's answer to Moses is thus at once a refusal and a pledge. He says of himself simply, ”I am who I am”-he is is without any qualification. This pledge is a name and a non-name at one and the same time. The Israelites were therefore perfectly right in refusing to utter this self-designation of G.o.d, expressed in the word YHWH, so as to avoid degrading it to the level of names of pagan deities. By the same token, recent Bible translations were wrong to write out this name-which Israel always regarded as mysterious and unutterable-as if it were just any old name. By doing so, they have dragged the mystery of G.o.d, which cannot be captured in images or in names lips can utter, down to the level of some familiar item within a common history of religions. without any qualification. This pledge is a name and a non-name at one and the same time. The Israelites were therefore perfectly right in refusing to utter this self-designation of G.o.d, expressed in the word YHWH, so as to avoid degrading it to the level of names of pagan deities. By the same token, recent Bible translations were wrong to write out this name-which Israel always regarded as mysterious and unutterable-as if it were just any old name. By doing so, they have dragged the mystery of G.o.d, which cannot be captured in images or in names lips can utter, down to the level of some familiar item within a common history of religions.

It remains true, of course, that G.o.d did not simply refuse Moses' request. If we want to understand this curious interplay between name and non-name, we have to be clear about what a name actually is. We could put it very simply by saying that the name creates the possibility of address or invocation. It establishes relations.h.i.+p. When Adam names the animals, what this means is not that he indicates their essential natures, but that he fits them into his human world, puts them within reach of his call. Having said this, we are now in a position to understand the positive meaning of the divine name: G.o.d establishes a relations.h.i.+p between himself and us. He puts himself within reach of our invocation. He enters into relations.h.i.+p with us and enables us to be in relations.h.i.+p with him. Yet this means that in some sense he hands himself over to our human world. He has made himself accessible and, therefore, vulnerable as well. He a.s.sumes the risk of relations.h.i.+p, of communion, with us.

The process that was brought to completion in the Incarnation had begun with the giving of the divine name. When we come to consider Jesus' high-priestly prayer, in fact, we will see that he presents himself there as the new Moses: ”I have manifested thy name to...men” (Jn 17:6). What began at the burning bush in the Sinai desert comes to fulfillment at the burning bush of the Cross. G.o.d has now truly made himself accessible in his incarnate Son. He has become a part of our world; he has, as it were, put himself into our hands.

This enables us to understand what the pet.i.tion for the sanctification of the divine name means. The name of G.o.d can now be misused and so G.o.d himself can be sullied. The name of G.o.d can be co-opted for our purposes and so the image of G.o.d can also be distorted. The more he gives himself into our hands, the more we can obscure his light; the closer he is, the more our misuse can disfigure him. Martin Buber once said that when we consider all the ways in which G.o.d's name has been so shamefully misused, we almost despair of uttering it ourselves. But to keep it silent would be an outright refusal of the love with which G.o.d comes to us. Buber says that our only recourse is to try as reverently as possible to pick up and purify the polluted fragments of the divine name. But there is no way we can do that alone. All we can do is plead with him not to allow the light of his name to be destroyed in this world.

Moreover, this plea-that he himself take charge of the sanctification of his name, protect the wonderful mystery of his accessibility to us, and constantly a.s.sert his true ident.i.ty as opposed to our distortion of it-this plea, of course, is always an occasion for us to examine our consciences seriously. How do I treat G.o.d's holy name? Do I stand in reverence before the mystery of the burning bush, before his incomprehensible closeness, even to the point of his presence in the Eucharist, where he truly gives himself entirely into our hands? Do I take care that G.o.d's holy companions.h.i.+p with us will draw us up into his purity and sanct.i.ty, instead of dragging him down into the filth?

THY K KINGDOM C COME.

In connection with the pet.i.tion for G.o.d's Kingdom, we recall all our earlier considerations concerning the term ”Kingdom of G.o.d.” With this pet.i.tion, we are acknowledging first and foremost the primacy of G.o.d. Where G.o.d is absent, nothing can be good. Where G.o.d is not seen, man and the world fall to ruin. This is what the Lord means when he says to ”seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well” (Mt 6:33). These words establish an order of priorities for human action, for how we approach everyday life.

This is not a promise that we will enter the Land of Plenty on condition that we are devout or that we are somehow attracted to the Kingdom of G.o.d. This is not an automatic formula for a well-functioning world, not a utopian vision of a cla.s.sless society in which everything works out well of its own accord, simply because there is no private property. Jesus does not give us such simple recipes. What he does do, though-as we saw earlier-is to establish an absolutely decisive priority. For ”Kingdom of G.o.d” means ”dominion of G.o.d,” and this means that his will is accepted as the true criterion. His will establishes justice, and part of justice is that we give G.o.d his just due and, in so doing, discover the criterion for what is justly due among men.

The order of priorities that Jesus indicates for us here may remind us of the Old Testament account of Solomon's first prayer after his accession to office. The story goes that the Lord appeared to the young king in a dream at night and gave him leave to make a request that the Lord promised to grant. A cla.s.sic dream motif of mankind! What does Solomon ask for? ”Give thy servant therefore a listening heart to govern thy people, that I may discern between good and evil” (1 Kings 3:9). G.o.d praises him because instead of asking for wealth, fortune, honor, or the death of his enemies, or even long life (2 Chron 1:11), tempting as that would have been, he asked for the truly essential thing: a listening heart, the ability to discern between good and evil. And for this reason Solomon receives those other things as well.

With the pet.i.tion ”thy Kingdom come” (not ”our kingdom”), the Lord wants to show us how to pray and order our action in just this way. The first and essential thing is a listening heart, so that G.o.d, not we, may reign. The Kingdom of G.o.d comes by way of a listening heart. That is its path. And that is what we must pray for again and again.

The encounter with Christ makes this pet.i.tion even deeper and more concrete. We have seen that Jesus is the Kingdom of G.o.d in person. The Kingdom of G.o.d is present wherever he is present. By the same token, the request for a listening heart becomes a request for communion with Jesus Christ, the pet.i.tion that we increasingly become ”one” with him (Gal 3:28). What is requested in this pet.i.tion is the true following of Christ, which becomes communion with him and makes us one body with him. Reinhold Schneider has expressed this powerfully: ”The life of this Kingdom is Christ's continuing life in those who are his own. In the heart that is no longer nourished by the vital power of Christ, the Kingdom ends; in the heart that is touched and transformed by it, the Kingdom begins.... The roots of the indestructible tree seek to penetrate into each heart. The Kingdom is one. It exists solely through the Lord who is its life, its strength, and its center” (Das Vaterunser, pp. 31f.). To pray for the Kingdom of G.o.d is to say to Jesus: Let us be yours, Lord! Pervade us, live in us; gather scattered humanity in your body, so that in you everything may be subordinated to G.o.d and you can then hand over the universe to the Father, in order that ”G.o.d may be all in all” (1 Cor 15:28).

THY W WILL B BE D DONE ON E EARTH AS I IT I IS IN H HEAVEN.

Two things are immediately clear from the words of this pet.i.tion: G.o.d has a will with and for us and it must become the measure of our willing and being; and the essence of ”heaven” is that it is where G.o.d's will is unswervingly done. Or, to put it in somewhat different terms, where G.o.d's will is done is heaven. The essence of heaven is oneness with G.o.d's will, the oneness of will and truth. Earth becomes ”heaven” when and insofar as G.o.d's will is done there; and it is merely ”earth,” the opposite of heaven, when and insofar as it withdraws from the will of G.o.d. This is why we pray that it may be on earth as it is in heaven-that earth may become ”heaven.”

But what is ”G.o.d's will”? How do we recognize it? How can we do it? The Holy Scriptures work on the premise that man has knowledge of G.o.d's will in his inmost heart, that anch.o.r.ed deeply within us there is a partic.i.p.ation in G.o.d's knowing, which we call conscience (cf., for example, Rom 2:15). But the Scriptures also know that this partic.i.p.ation in the Creator's knowledge, which he gave us in the context of our creation ”according to his likeness,” became buried in the course of history. It can never be completely extinguished, but it has been covered over in many ways, like a barely flickering flame, all too often at risk of being smothered under the ash of all the prejudices that have piled up within us. And that is why G.o.d has spoken to us anew, uttering words in history that come to us from outside and complete the interior knowledge that has become all too hidden.

The heart of this historically situated ”complementary teaching” contained in biblical Revelation is the Decalogue given on Mount Sinai. As we have seen, this is by no means abolished

<script>