I have been reflecting on the Holy Will of God.
When I have been praying for those souls who I love, I have been reflecting on God’s Will.
Now, although God does NOT will for terrible things to happen to us – because God is perfect goodness… He does allow terrible things to happen for us, because if God did not allow a thing, then it could never happen. And yet, when those terrible things happen, God turns them to the good.
I have been praying about what it means to accept – truly accept without question – the Holy Will of God.
We have a great example of this of course in the lives of Christ Himself (God the Son) and His Holy Mother (The Blessed Virgin)… Christ and His Holy Mother accepted the heat and the cold, the hunger and the thirst, the travel and the injustice and the poverty of their earthly lives. They accepted the Will of God without question for the whole of their earthly lives.
In the Our Father, which Christ taught us to pray, we pray that “Thy Will be done”. And I have been thinking about what that really means. Why do I bother praying for God’s will to be done, when it clearly will be done anyway because everything that happens on Earth and in Heaven ONLY happens because God allows it to happen with His Holy Will…
Scott Hahn asks the same question in his book, “Understanding Our Father”, when he writes, “Why bother to pray, “Thy will be done”? Isn’t it presumptuous, or even redundant? Isn’t God’s will what happens anyway? Why pray for God’s will? It seems like praying for gravity to continue. The answer is simple. When we pray, “Thy will be done,” we do not change or strengthen the will of God, but we do change and strengthen ourselves. Such prayer disposes our hearts to do the will of the Father (cf. Catechism, no. 2611). Our prayer conditions us to say, “Thy will,” when the pull of our nature says, “My will.” In the Garden of Gethsemane, we see Jesus Himself struggling against the natural human instinct for self-preservation, the natural human dread of pain and death. “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Mt. 26:39).”
Because although our lives on this Earth are wonderful, Christ taught us to pray for the Father’s Will to be done on EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN… And that means that unless I can willingly accept the Holy Will of God on Earth, I shall not merit Heaven, because I cannot chose to accept it in one place and not the other. And I have been thinking about that today, because Saint Augustine of Hippo wrote, “The same fire burns the lost and the saved.”
And knowing that there is one fire, I wish to accept the Holy Will of God so that I shall be able to stand with the saved…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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