On Earth as it is in Heaven

"Thy kingdom come; thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

We pray the words of the Lord's Prayer with a degree of rote recitation from the sheer quantity of times we've spoken it. It becomes almost mechanistic, robotic, empty-headed, nonchalant.

To an extent, the more positive aspect of these mostly negatively-connoted words is not only ok; it's encouraged.

Prayers like the Lord's Prayer, Hail Mary, Glory Be, etc. are "familiar prayers," prayers that are meant to be so well ingrained that you can recall them without difficulty. They're meant to provide our prayer lives with a foundation, a basis, a default. That's not all they are - each prayer carries incredible meaning if we choose to pray over the words with intentional scrutiny and reflection - but they're intended to be the prayers that come forth from our being naturally.

We can look to these prayers especially when we are unable to come up with anything else, when we don't want to come up with anything else, when we don't want anything else but those prayers that we've known all our lives, in our church, in our school, in our families. These familiar prayers are meant to give us the words that will remind us of God's love and presence before we struggle seriously or move anywhere near the brink of hopelessness. We can turn to the Hail Mary or the Our Father to get our wheels turning and move into the embrace of God through prayer; these prayers catalyze our movement toward Him during those times when familiarity breeds comfort and peace, bringing solidity to our faith in a moment when we are seeking God.

Within these beautiful prayers lie profound formulas. These well-known phrases are simple enough to flow on naturally but rich enough to nourish us with great meaning. One phrase I come back to time and time again is in the Our Father:

Having obsessed in the form of an Honors Senior Thesis over the Kingdom of God, I enjoy that I've gained a layered understanding to what the Kingdom of God means for us. As a result, I really latch on to mentions of it in the readings for mass, and I usually perk up each time we pray over the Kingdom in the familiar prayer we say each mass.

We pray that God's kingdom will come, that His will be done. We pray that it happens on earth just as it happens in heaven. How can we know heaven on earth? How can we recognize and make present and real the Kingdom of God? Rather than dance around this any further, I'm gonna pass you on to one of my favorite theologians, who is all over this. Read it twice or three times or more because it makes those familiar words take on a beautiful depth for you when it sinks in...

"Two things are immediately clear from the words of this petition: God 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 God's will is unswervingly done. Or, to put it in in somewhat different terms, where God's will is done is heaven. The essence of heaven is oneness with God's will, the oneness of will and truth. Earth becomes 'heaven' when and insofar as God's will is done there; and it is merely 'earth,' the opposite of heaven, when and insofar as it withdraws from the will of God. This is why we pray that is may be on earth as it is in 'heaven' – that earth may become 'heaven.'" -Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth (Pt. 1)