In today’s first reading (Ephesians 3:14-21), Paul prays that the Church in Ephesus, and by extension, the entire Church, may deepen their understanding of God’s plan for salvation in Christ. It is a plan that affects the whole universe with the “breadth and length and height and depth” of God’s love. The apostle prays that we may perceive the redemptive love of Christ and thereby be completely immersed in the fullness of God.
It is a prayer that Paul makes kneeling in the presence of the Father. We are accustomed to kneeling during prayer but in Paul’s time it was normal to stand, so Paul’s posture here expresses a very special submission and reverence.
“I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and earth is named.” Paul likes to use puns, where there is a play on words, and he is doing so here. The Greek words for ‘Father’ (pater) and ‘family’ (patria) are very similar. Patria is used for any social group descended from a common ancestor. Hence, God is the common ancestor of every person, of every community. This we affirm every time we pray “Our Father” in the Lord’s Prayer. We do not address God as strangers or as outsiders but as someone who is very close to us in a real family sense.
Then Paul lays out his petitions on behalf of the Church: May the Father give you the power, through His Spirit, for your hidden self to grow strong; so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith; and then, planted in love and built on love, you will, with all the saints, have strength to grasp the breadth and length, the height and the depth of His love; until, knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge, you are filled with the utter fullness of God.
This is language reminiscent of the Stoics. He prays that we may have what may be termed an almost cosmic grasp of the role of the Christ. “That you may have strength to grasp the breadth and length, the height and the depth”. Paul uses it to suggest the cosmic function of Christ in the rebirth of the world. It could be referred to the size of the mystery of salvation, or alternatively, to Christ’s universal love on which the mystery depends. Christ becomes the Omega Point, to which all creation and creativity is ordered.
In a paradoxical phrase, Paul prays that the Christians will come to know and understand what is indeed beyond all human knowing, namely, the love of Christ for us and for the whole world. It is the infinite love of God, expressed by Jesus dying on the cross as the uttermost proof of love, “the greatest love that a person can show”. On this side of death, we will never get beyond grasping this love as though through a clouded mirror. We live in the “Cloud of Unknowing” and yet, from time to time, we can be given glimpses of understanding. It is something that the mystics have experienced but in a way that they cannot put in words.
With this understanding, imperfect though it be, Christians are “filled with the utter fullness of God”. Christ, who himself is filled with the divine life, fills Christians with it. The Church itself, as part of the Body of Christ, completes the fullness of the whole Christ. Christians enter both the Church and the new cosmos, which they help to build, and which is the fullness of the total Christ.
Faith, knowledge and understanding, love and fullness – these are the gifts that Paul prays for the Church. Surely, we, too, need to make this prayer our own.
Finally, Paul concludes with a prayer of praise to God through Christ Jesus. He praises the God whose power at work in us can achieve more than we could ever ask for or even dream of. In one sense, Paul can point to the rapid growth of the Churches, despite so many difficulties, as a convincing sign of this. And when we see the vastness of the Church today, we see the truth of these words. They are the basis of our hope for continuing growth in our own Church.
Lastly, Paul prays for God to be glorified through Christ in every generation of the Church. The greater glory of God is the essence of all living and everything we do is to be directed to this. Faith and love leading to praise.
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!