On Prayer 5
Summary: Praying for God's kingdom to come means longing for the end of the world and the final vindication of the martyrs, not asking for the world to be prolonged.
Latin text · CSEL 20:184
VENIAT quoque REGNUM TUUM ad id pertinet, quo et fiat uoluntas tua, in nobis scilicet. nam deus quando non regnat, in cuius manu cor omnium regum est? sed quicquid nobis optamus, in illum auguramur, et illi deputamus quod ab illo expectamus. itaque si ad dei uoluntatem et ad nostram suspensionem pertinet regni dominici repraesentatio, quomodo quidam per tractum quendam in saeculo postulant, cum regnum dei, quod ut adueniat oramus, ad consummationem saeculi tendat? optamus maturius regnare et non diutius seruire. etiamsi praefinitum in oratione non esset de postulando regni aduentu, ultro eam uocem protulissemus festinantes ad spei nostrae complexum. clamant ad dominum inuidia animae martyrum sub altari: quonam usque non ulcisceris, domine, sanguinem nostrum de incolis terrae? nam utique ultio illorum a saeculi fine dirigitur. immo quam celeriter ueniat, domine, regnum tuum, uotum Christianorum, confusio nationum, exultatio angelorum, propter quod conflictamur, immo potius propter quod oramus.
English · Claude translation
“Your kingdom come” also relates to the same thing as “Your will be done”: in us, that is. For when does God not reign, in whose hand is the heart of all kings? But whatever we wish for ourselves we direct in hope toward him, and we attribute to him what we expect from him. So if the manifestation of the Lord's kingdom relates to the will of God and to our anxious waiting, how do some ask for a kind of prolongation of the world, when the kingdom of God, for whose coming we pray, tends toward the consummation of the world? We desire to reign sooner and not to serve longer. Even if it had not been prescribed in the prayer to ask for the coming of the kingdom, we would have uttered that cry of our own accord, hastening to the embrace of our hope. The souls of the martyrs beneath the altar cry to the Lord in indignation, “How long, O Lord, will you not avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?” For their vengeance, certainly, is ordered from the end of the world. Indeed, as swiftly as possible, O Lord, may your kingdom come: the prayer of Christians, the confusion of the nations, the exultation of the angels, for which we suffer conflict, or rather for which we pray.
About this passage
Notes
Translation notes
- The digital text's garbled “VErrm-r” is read as “VENIAT”. The allusion is Prov 21:1; the quotation is Rev 6:10. Contrast Apol. 39.2, where Christians pray for the delay of the end; here Tertullian criticizes those who pray for the world's prolongation.
Notes on the original text
- Digital text corrected (garbled word in the digital text; stray punctuation in the digital text): VErrm-r → VENIAT; saeculi. tendat → saeculi tendat.
Cite this passage
Tertullian, Or. 5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-oratione/5/).
Plain text
Tertullian, Or. 5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-oratione/5/).
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