From the Archives: We Never Pray Alone (Part II)

The East Window above the altar at the Lutheran Church of Our Saviour, Baltimore, MD. Photo: OrangeNJson, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

The following article is the second part of the Rev. Kurt Reinhardt’s keynote address at the St. Mark’s Conference held at Our Saviour Lutheran Church in Baltimore on April 24–25, 2023, which may also be viewed here. This article appeared in Vol. 31, No. 7, Trinity 2023.

We Never Pray Alone: Part II

Rev. Kurt Reinhardt

The beauty of the “Our” that begins the prayer that Jesus invites us into is that while it is intensely personal, it is far from the private myopic “just me and Jesus” thinking sadly prevalent in much of present-day Evangelical Christianity. The “Our” of the “Our Father” lives out in the spoken Word the reality sent by the resurrected Christ through Mary Magdalene to the disciples: “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” That beautiful “Our” that the Lord opens our lips to say, can only be and truly only ever is prayed in the Spirit-given faith that the Incarnate Son has made Himself baptismally one with me and, so, has made His prayer my own as He unites my prayer in His flesh to His own. What is on the lips of Jesus the Spirit has put on my lips as what is on my lips in faith the Spirit places on the lips of Jesus. At the core, then, when any Christian prays, there are always at least three voices united in the “Our” that addresses the Father: the Christian’s, the Spirit’s, and the Son’s. This truth beyond question can embolden the weakest of faiths and strengthen the feeblest of voices in prayer. No, we never pray alone, no prayer is never private, I never have to go it alone before the Father.

Christian prayer is always a team sport with the star players of the Son and the Spirit on my side, but there are more players on the team. Without question, prayer to the saints and angels to request the joining of their prayer to our own gave rise especially in common practice to an idolatrous regard for the saints, which dangerously put them on par or even, at times, ahead of the Son and the Spirit, resulting in, horrifyingly, an even worse semi-pantheism. Understandably, this horrific perversion has made many of us gun-shy of any talk of the intercession of the saints, but Luther and the Confessors did not fall into the error of denying or dismissing it altogether.

Article XXI of the Apology of the Augsburg Confession states,

[W]e grant that the angels pray for us. . . . We also grant that the saints in heaven pray for the church in general, as they prayed for the church universal while they were on earth. [7]

The article further grants “that blessed Mary prays for the church.” [8] While the prayer of angels is attested to by Zechariah 1:12, where “the angel of the LORD said, ‘O LORD of hosts, how long will you have no mercy on Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, against which you have been angry these seventy years?’” and the martyred saints in heaven are seen by John under the altar praying, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” the Confessors could find no Scriptural support for the Roman practice of the invocation of the saints; however, as they clearly state, the angels, the Blessed Virgin Mary and the saints pray for us. This reality, I would say, simply flows from the truth that the saints, like all the baptized, are most surely and even more fully and completely abiding in Christ in heaven and so intercede in and with Him at the right hand of God, where He is interceding for us. Surely in heaven, of all places, the saints do as Jesus does. It would be odd indeed if those in whom faith is perfected and love is all in all, would cease to do what faith and love move us to do: to look to the Father, by the Spirit through Christ, to hallow His name, to make His kingdom come, to cause His will be done, to give daily bread, to forgive trespasses, to lead away from temptation, and to deliver from evil—for the Church as a whole and for every individual Christian. Von Balthasar puts it this way,

When Ignatius pursues his seminal contemplation “before the whole court of heaven,” he is not embroidering or exaggerating, nor is he translating into ordinary terms an experience which is only valid in the mystical order: he is contemplating truth in its proper context; he has come, as Paul says, “to the city of the living God.” [9]

And C.S Lewis drawing on the liturgy makes this point,

The consoling thing is that while Christendom is divided about the rationality, and even the lawfulness, of praying to the saints, we are all agreed about praying with them. “With angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.” [10]

Although it may be argued that the saints in heaven do not need to pray the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer for themselves—nor do we need to pray them for them, since they are in heaven and in no need of such things— this is an erroneous way of seeing God and His gifts. It mistakenly sees God’s gifts as something we receive once and then we are done: we’ve got them—story over. But the truth is that we truly can never and never really do possess anything. Nothing is ever truly ours, not in the sense of ever being able to say truly “mine.” God alone can say “Mine” over all things, and so He is the one who must continually give. The fullness of God’s grace is not just that He graciously initially gives, but that He graciously continuously gives. All that I have bodily, materially, and spiritually I only have because God, moment by moment, continues to give it all to me, as all that I will have in eternity I will only continue to have as God graciously continues to pour it out on me forever. This truth is perhaps why the Confessors also clearly stated that they did not forbid the prayers for the dead. Not in the sense that our prayers would cause God to give the saints something that they would not receive from Him otherwise, but in recognition that He is still the one who gives them all things. The beauty in heaven is not that our prayer will cease but that it will be perfected in that we will know to ask, want to ask, and take joy in the asking as we will live forever in the certainty of the continual receiving. C. S. Lewis summed up the case for praying for the dead in this way, “Of course I pray for the dead. The action is so spontaneous, so all but inevitable. . . I hardly know how the rest of my prayers would survive if those for the dead were forbidden. At our age the majority of those that we love best are dead. What sort of intercourse with God could I have if what I love best were unmentionable to Him? . . . God has already done all for them. What more should we ask? But don’t we believe that God has already and is already doing all that He can for the living? What more should we ask? Yet we are told to ask.”[11] And so, as the saints in heaven pray for us as members of the Church and we are not in error to pray for them as members of the Church in heaven—which I would suggest we do when we pray the Lord’s Prayer with Christ—so together, we as the true one Body are joined together in the intercession of our Head before the Father.

Luther in his “A Simple Way to Pray” encourages Master Peter the Barber to begin his prayers by saying, “I pray in the name of my Lord Jesus Christ together with all thy saints and Christians on earth as he has taught us: Our Father . . .”[12] Luther encourages us in the truth that in prayer we not only come before the Father by the Spirit in Christ, but we also do it in communion with the whole Church—the saints in heaven and all Christians on earth. As he encourages Master Peter a little further on,

Never think that you are kneeling or standing alone, rather think that the whole of Christendom, all devout Christians, are standing there beside you and you are standing among them in a common, united petition which God cannot disdain. [13]

Von Balthasar puts the same truth in this beautiful way,

Even when [contemplation] takes place in the “secret room” of the Sermon on the Mount, it is never the act of a hermit, isolating him from his fellows; on the contrary it places him at the centre of the Church. [14]

Now that is a prayer chain of epic proportions! No having to get Doris to call Martha to call Gertrude to call Fran to call Mabel to call Shirley to call Bertha to pray for Mary’s phlebitis or having to post an all-points prayer bulletin for all your friends on Facebook. Although asking others to pray with or for us for a specific need is a good thing to do, as we are encouraged in Scripture to pray for one another, we should be encouraged in the truth that no matter what the need may be our prayers about it never come before the Father alone. Of course, the star players of the Son and the Spirit are always on the field with us, but so is the whole roster of heaven and earth. When we ask others to pray for us and they join us in prayer, they are, in a way, a sacramental sign of the hidden spiritual reality of the greater praying Church. The congregation gathered on Sunday morning in the liturgy, after all, is also just such a sacred sacramental sign of the Church catholic.

To illustrate, let us consider for a moment the case of the sufferings of my poor 85-year-old father, who fractured his skull and suffered a brain bleed when he fell off of a stepladder on the Monday of Holy Week. Needless to say, the last three weeks have been hard, beginning with the twelve hours that I sat with him in the chairs in the ER waiting room before he saw a doctor, and another three hours before he had a CT scan and finally at five in the morning received a diagnosis. After another five days in the ICU he was released directly home on Holy Saturday, where over the next four days he became dehydrated, went into kidney failure, and had his bladder overfill, which pressed on his bowel and caused no end of trouble. After several falls we had to call 911 and have him readmitted to the hospital. At this point we are not sure where everything stands, as he was the main caregiver for my mother who was diagnosed with dementia in November, and he has slipped into delirium and can barely stand, let alone walk. As I’m sure you can imagine, I haven’t ceased praying for him over the last three weeks, often just adding my own groans to those of the Spirit that are too deep for words. I know and have found immeasurable comfort in the truth that my prayers for his health and healing have not risen to heaven alone, but joined with those of my family, my friends, and his and my congregation, have flowed into the great chorus of the earthly and heavenly Church that continually cries out, “deliver us from evil” by the Spirit through the Son to the Father. I have also been encouraged by the truth that my plans for the sustaining of his and my faith in the midst of this great trial have flowed into the Church catholic’s ongoing petition that our Father would hallow His name and make His kingdom come. The same can be said for my pleas that God’s good and gracious will would be done for my dad, that He would help us to submit ourselves to whatever that will might be, and that He would help us both to do His will, by helping my dad to be a good patient and by helping me to do His will by fulfilling my vocation as a son to my father. Those petitions have also not risen on high by the Spirit through the lips of the Son to Father, either, but have also flowed into the heavenly and earthly Church’s great chorus prayed in concert in the petition, “Thy will be done.” The same can be said of all our other prayers under the burden of this cross, our pleas for the ongoing needs of my parents in either retirement or nursing care, as well as provision for all our family’s expenses as we travel to and from our homes to look after my mother and see to the needs of my father in the hospital—all of these please flow into the Church catholic’s continual petition, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Likewise, her petition, “Lead us not into temptation,” gathers in and bears up to the Father our prayers that we would be kept from doubting Him and falling into despair, as trouble and trial is added to already great burdens and we are brought to the edge, if not beyond, what we can bear and are barely able to cast our burdens upon the Lord that He might sustain us.

All this is simply the truth behind the “ours” and the “us’s” of the Lord’s Prayer. As we pray to our Father by the Spirit with and through the Son, we are praying not just for our own needs but for the needs of all the Father’s children in heaven and on earth. Jesus does not tell us to pray, “Give me this day my daily bread,” but “Give us this day our daily bread.” Certainly, “me” and “my” is included in the “us” and the “our,” but “us” is more than just “me” and “our” is far more than just “my.” With “us” and “our,” we are never praying only by ourselves for ourselves but with and for all of God’s children, in heaven and on earth. And so, as my prayers have risen up to heaven for my father, all of God’s children have been praying for Him in their us’s and ours. So also, we have been praying for all others when we have prayed our us’s and our ours to our heavenly Father in the confusion of the ER, amongst the beeping and blips of the ICU and on the geriatric floor. To return again to our image of a team on the field, it is important to understand that in prayer we all play our part, small and insignificant as it may seem, weak and faltering as we may be, yet led by our star players, we all work together, leaning on and depending on one another. As our prayers for my father have been carried along by the prayers of the Church, we, even in our helplessness and need, have helped carry along the prayers of others as we have prayed with the Church. As von Balthasar puts it,

For the Church is not a gathering of hermits, each praying and contemplating in solitude, only having contact with one another in peripheral areas of life; it is the communion of saints. [15]

And C. S. Lewis comments,

Will you believe it? It is only quite recently I made [“With angels and archangels and all the company of heaven”] a part of my private prayers—I festoon it round “hallowed be Thy name” . . . One always accepted this with theoretically. But it is quite different when one brings it into consciousness at an appropriate moment and wills the association of one’s little twitter with the voice of the great saints and (we hope) of our own dear dead. They may drown some of its uglier qualities and set off any tiny value it has. [16]

We sadly often consider prayer outside the truth of the communion of saints, which is no surprise, as our sinfulness at its heart is all about dismantling the communion that God created us in with Him and one another in order to stand on our own. Sinners want to, like to, and are happiest standing on their own. It allows us to live in the delusion of the lie that we bought into in Eden that we could be our own gods. But God did not create us for such demonic infertile independence but for a sacred, fruitful interdependence. Christian prayer, then, is never a solitary exercise. A Christian never opens his mouth or speaks alone, even when he prays by himself. When he prays rightly, he always prays with others and for others. So in prayer and all the other aspects of the Christian life God is at work to bind back together what man in sin has separated.

In these gray and latter days when the Church is struggling in so many ways in so many places, as she is afflicted from within and without, as she stumbles along under the burden of the cross on the via dolorosa that she has been asked to walk, and as her individual members are often dismayed and feel so isolated and pushed to the brink of despair, for her, their Mother, and for themselves there is great comfort in the truth that the race that the Church is running is not one that she runs alone but a great team relay race. The first leg of that race has been run already by the Son of God, who has opened up such a great lead in the race that our team’s victory is certain, even if all those who have received the baton from him barely crawl along after Him, the team cannot fail to win. He continues to follow along beside her encouraging each of her members on as they run in a pack together, praying with and for one another, working as one to finish their course. Furthermore, the great cloud of witnesses that surround her are not simply bystanders or even just fans watching her run, but members of her team in the great relay race, who, having handed the baton on to her as they entered into glory, continue to have a vested interest in her progress and will cheer her on with their prayers.

At the best of times, C. S. Lewis’ self-reflection that “[t]he truth is, I haven’t any language weak enough to depict the weakness of my spiritual life. If I weakened it enough it would cease to be language at all” [17] resonates deeply with me.

But by far the most comforting truth when it comes to prayer is found in the truth that while it is profoundly personal, it is never private because it is something that takes place by the Spirit in Christ amongst the communion of saints.

Amongst the many moving and thought-provoking experiences that I had in the summers that I spent working on an archeological dig in Israel, one that continues to stand out in my mind is the evening when a fellow seminarian, who had come over to spend a couple of weeks on the dig with me, and I prayed Evening Prayer together with a small sputtering candle as the sun set over the Mediterranean. What was so moving and continues to give me thought was that beyond the fact that there were the two of us gathered together in the Lord’s name in the land of our Lord’s Incarnation, as the sea air blew over us and its waves rolled onto the shore, was that we prayed in the archeological remains of what had been St. Paul’s prison cell as he was held in the governor’s palace in Casearea Maritima. To be praying in the same place where that great apostle prayed and where other ancient Christians had prayed, when they enlarged that cell in the Byzantine period into a little chapel, tied me in such a profound and moving way to God’s faithfulness and the continuity of the Christian faith. I have had opportunity to encourage congregations in decline that are facing possible closure with the truth shown by that experience that even though centuries later, after all the citizens of Caesarea Maritima were long gone, the Lord gathered His people in that place to hear His Word and call on His name. What has further enriched that moving experience of twenty-five years ago is the realization now, that in that moment we were not simply repeating something in an ancient and holy place that had been done there long ago and was long past, but were actually participating in something that was ever ongoing in God’s eternal Now. Not only were we praying in the place where St. Paul and those who followed had prayed; we were praying with them in that moment, as we were praying with all those who will pray after us long after our own dust returns to the ground to lie dormant until the resurrection of all flesh. For truly, as we pray in the Spirit through the Son, all our voices blend together into one great chorus that reaches the ear of the Almighty in the one moment of His eternal Present. For the praying Christian there is never just his own feeble faltering petition that rises up like a whiff of incense before the Father’s throne, but it is always supported and surrounded by the chorus of all God’s people that echoes out, supporting the glorious aria of the eternal Son. Small and feeble as any Christian’s prayer may be, it is ordained by God to sing its part and nevertheless contributes to the volume and beauty of hymn that rises up to heaven and reverberates around the throne of our God. This was true of the repeated “O God”s that were on the lips of my suffering father in hospital, as it was true of the subconscious and conscious “Lord, have mercy” in my mind and on my lips as I helped care for him. Both our cries, as small and feeble and as of little faith at times as they were, flowed into the great Kyrie, eleison chorus of all God’s people of all times and places that supports and flows into the Son’s breath-taking “Deliver us from evil” that ever moves the Father’s heart.

[7] Ap XXI 8–9, Tappert.
[8] Ap XXI 27, Tappert.
[9] Von Balthasar, Prayer, 290.
[10] Lewis, Letter to Malcolm, 26.
[11] Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, 138.
[12] AE 43:194–5.
[13] AE 43:198.
[14] Von Balthasar, Prayer, 82.
[15] Von Balthasar, Prayer, 213.
[16] Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, 27.
[17] Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, 144.