By Father Thomas Esposito, O. Cist.
Special to The Texas Catholic
“I want to go to heaven” is a common expression by Christians when asked to give a reason for their faith. Curiously, the phrase “to go” or “to get to heaven” is not found in the Bible. While heaven is rightly considered the goal and magnetic pull on everyone’s spiritual compass, it is neither a destination nor a physical place as Jesus presents it in the “Our Father” prayer.
Our usual translation of the opening line, “Our Father, who art in heaven,” makes singular a noun that is plural in St. Matthew’s Greek: “who art in the heavens” (6:9). Just a few lines later, the singular appears: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Mt 6:10). A beautiful mystery is concealed within these verses.
Matthew typically employs the plural “heavens” throughout his Gospel. The heavens open at Jesus’ baptism (3:17), and both John the Baptist and Jesus assert that “the kingdom of the heavens has arrived” (3:2; 4:17). To “the poor in spirit” and “those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness” belong “the kingdom of the heavens” (5:3, 10). The plural “heavens” signifies God’s absolute transcendence, the total otherness that separates the divine from the human. The Lord cannot be contained in any place or enclosed by any part of creation. Yet God desires to bridge that vast divide, to send a ladder down to us, and He has in fact done so through the incarnation of Jesus Christ, the eternal Son who allows us to call ourselves adopted children of the Father.
The singular “heaven,” on the other hand, describes not simply the physical firmament above or the beauty of sun, moon, and stars, but the entire created order. The pairing of “heaven and earth” highlights the sovereignty of God over all of creation. “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” Jesus says at the end of the Gospel (28:18). Preaching the Gospel to all nations and baptizing them is thus the essential way of channeling Christ’s power through human words and actions, thus incarnating the hope expressed in the petition “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (6:10). These two mentions of “the heavens” and “heaven” in the Our Father prayer thus frame three requests that clarify how we are to pray and live joyfully in the Father’s love.
Father John Gavin describes this framing beautifully in his splendid book, “Mysteries of the Lord’s Prayer:”
“A bridge is formed between Creator and creation through the fulfillment of three petitions: the hallowing of God’s name, the inbreaking of the kingdom, and the fulfillment of the divine will. A unity is formed not between two places, but between the transcendent holiness of God and the created cosmos.”
We did not create “heaven and earth,” and we have no access to “the heavens” unless God the Father who is in the heavens teaches us how to access that transcendent realm. Yet He has done just that in Christ and the Church, granting us the privilege of receiving the Eucharist, “the bread from heaven” (Psalm 78:24; Wisdom 16:20; John 6:51). He even desires to employ our faint light as His own luminous mystery, channeled marvelously to everyone we meet: “Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father who is in the heavens” (Matthew 5:16).
And yet we prefer not to climb the ladder or to shine that supernatural light. The basic position of rebellion, innate to our fallen nature, is encapsulated in a poem by the 20th century French poet Jacques Prévert. He begins his poem “Pater Noster” with a note of amazing audacity: “Our Father, who art in heaven… stay there!”
Prévert then expresses his preference for aesthetic charms and worldly pleasures, summed up as “the mysteries” of New York and Paris, “which are as good as the Trinity.” His casual dismissal of any transcendent truth reflects a sad hostility to any mystery beyond his own senses. By calling on God not to bother him, Prévert presumes that he can renounce the restlessness of his own heart that, in fact, is made not to be content with “heaven and earth.” There is a certain desperate resignation in Prévert’s choice for the passing glories of this fragile existence, so dominated (as he acknowledges in the poem) by war, weakness, and sadness. The paradox of the Christian life, present subtly in the Our Father, reminds us that God wishes us to enjoy the glories of “heaven and earth” and to delight in the divine life of “the heavens” beyond our created, and therefore mortal, limits.
Father Thomas Esposito, O.Cist., is a monk at the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Dallas and teaches in the theology department at the University of Dallas.
Cutline for featured image: Worshippers join hands during the Our Father. (CNS photo/Jim West)
