This biblical expression does not mean a place (“space”), but a way of being; it does not mean that God is distant, but majestic. Our Father is not “elsewhere”: he transcends everything we can conceive of his holiness. It is precisely because he is thrice holy that he is so close to the humble and contrite heart.
“Our Father who art in heaven” is rightly understood to mean that God is in the hearts of the just, as in his holy temple. At the same time, it means that those who pray should desire the one they invoke to dwell in them.1
“Heaven” could also be those who bear the image of the heavenly world, and in whom God dwells and tarries.2
The symbol of the heavens refers us back to the mystery of the covenant we are living when we pray to our Father. He is in heaven, his dwelling place; the Father’s house is our homeland. Sin has exiled us from the land of the covenant,3 but conversion of heart enables us to return to the Father, to heaven.4 In Christ, then, heaven and earth are reconciled,5 for the Son alone “descended from heaven” and causes us to ascend there with him, by his Cross, Resurrection, and Ascension.6
When the Church prays “our Father who art in heaven”, she is professing that we are the People of God, already seated “with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” and “hidden with Christ in God”;7 yet at the same time, “here indeed we groan, and long to put on our heavenly dwelling.”8
[Christians] are in the flesh, but do not live according to the flesh. They spend their lives on earth, but are citizens of heaven.9
St. Augustine, De serm. Dom. in monte 2, 5, 18: PL 34, 1277.
St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. myst. 5:11: PG 33, 1117.
Cf. Gen 3.
Jer 3:19 - 4:1a; Lk 15:18, 21.
Cf. Isa 45:8; Ps 85:12.
Jn 3:13; 12:32; 14:2-3; 16:28; 20:17; Eph 4:9-10; Heb 1:3; 2:13.
Eph 2:6; Col 3:3.
II Cor 5:2; cf. Phil 3:20; Heb 13:14.
Ad Diognetum 5: PG 2, 1173.