NOTES for Rom 8:26
It is interesting, what Paul means, by saying that sometimes, when we do not know ourselves about what to pray, "the Spirit maketh intercession for us"? We would have been able of course to remember the experience, probably familiar to every Christian, when the prayer which we begin with our own will, is as if seized from above, and we pray already not alone and not only by ourselves: it's as if a certain power supports and leads us, power of the breath of God, and we understand then that God was very near and we are really not alone any more. But here, it is all the same our prayer, our relationships with God and Christ.
Is it what the apostle meant, or maybe, there is still something more? Or the emotion so familiar to us hides again something else, of what we can only guess. The entire Kingdom is penetrated by the breath of God; as Christians, as inhabitants of the Kingdom, it is impossible for us not to feel it. That is why, as seen, we sometimes experience this breath, as God's participation in our prayers. But indeed, the Kingdom is something more, than just our relationships with God and with Christ. Of course relationships form its foundation, but it also has its spiritual substance, which is formed by the same breath of God, that we began to call afterward the Spirit and perceive as the third hypostasis of the Trinity. But such a substance of course stops already being just a substance, similar to substances of our world.
Because it is in itself full of live, full as never has been no substance of the non transformed creation. It is not simply the nature; it is the living embodiment of the wisdom of God and God's love. In our non transformed world the nature is inert; it is against any spiritual influence, as such. In the Kingdom everything is different: there the nature is absolutely malleable, answering kindly to any spiritual influence. And the man living in the Kingdom becomes a part of this spiritualized nature.
His prayer becomes not only the element of his spiritual life, but also a part of the nature of the Kingdom. And then the entire Kingdom can respond, particularly, if the one who prays suddenly got confuse and does not know what to ask next. The proverb of one’s own house, where walls help, is in this case more than ever relevant: in the Kingdom its inhabitants are not only really helped by all, but also by everything. And if words are not enough for us, the breath of God that pervades the Kingdom, speaks for us. Or, more exactly says the words that we miss.