On Prayer 4

Following this form we add, “Your will be done in heaven and on earth”: not that anyone prevents God's will from being done and we pray for the success of his will, but we ask that his will be done in all. For by a figurative interpretation of flesh and spirit, we are heaven and earth. Though even if it is to be understood simply, the sense of the petition is the same: that God's will be done in us on earth, so that it may be done also in heaven. And what does God will but that we walk according to his discipline? We ask, then, that he supply us with the substance and capacity of his will, so that we may be saved both in heaven and on earth; for the sum of his will is the salvation of those whom he has adopted. There is also that will of God which the Lord carried out by preaching, working, and enduring. For if he himself declared that he did not do his own will but the Father's, then without doubt the things he did were the Father's will, to which we are now called as to models, that we too may preach, work, and endure even to death. To fulfill these, we need the will of God. Again, in saying “Your will be done,” we also wish ourselves well, in that there is nothing evil in God's will, even if something adverse is inflicted according to each person's deserts. By this saying we now forewarn ourselves to endure. The Lord too, when under the pressure of his passion he wished to show the weakness of the flesh in his own flesh, said, “Father, take this cup away,” and, remembering himself, “except that not my will but yours be done.” He himself was the will and power of the Father, and yet, to show the endurance that is due, he gave himself up to the Father's will.