Devotion for today: Thy will for my life is my will for my life

Today we conclude our look at the petition in The Lord’s Prayer: Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Here is what I wrote last Monday:

God’s will for you is the dream He had for you when He placed you in your mother’s womb. Every talent, every ability, every physical feature, where and when you were born, were all part of His plan for you. He embedded in your heart the desire to become what He needs in the world at this time in history. He blessed you with faith and hope and love in order to get yourself and everyone He placed in your life back to Him. Ralph Martin tells us in his book “The Fulfillment of all Desire” that “God’s will for us is our total perfection, our total conformity to love of God and neighbor.” Examine your life, study your gifts and compare your life to that of Jesus’. How are you doing so far?

Mark 14:33-34: he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. And he said to them ‘My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch”.

Mark 12:36: “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you; remove this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what you will”.

Dear brothers and sisters, every day in the prayer of the Our Father we ask the Lord: “thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Mt 6:10). In other words we recognize that there is a will of God with us and for us, a will of God for our life that must become every day, increasingly, the reference of our willing and of our being; we recognize moreover that “heaven” is where God’s will is done and where the “earth” becomes “heaven”, a place where love, goodness, truth and divine beauty are present, only if, on earth, God’s will is done.

In Jesus’ prayer to the Father on that terrible and marvelous night in Gethsemane, the “earth” became “heaven”; the “earth” of his human will, shaken by fear and anguish, was taken up by his divine will in such a way that God’s will was done on earth. And this is also important in our own prayers: we must learn to entrust ourselves more to divine Providence, to ask God for the strength to come out of ourselves to renew our “yes” to him, to say to him “thy will be done”, so as to conform our will to his. It is a prayer we must pray every day because it is not always easy to entrust ourselves to God’s will, repeating the “yes” of Jesus, the “yes” of Mary.

The Gospel accounts of Gethsemane regretfully show that the three disciples, chosen by Jesus to be close to him, were unable to watch with him, sharing in his prayer, in his adherence to the Father and they were overcome by sleep. Dear friends, let us ask the Lord to enable us to keep watch with him in prayer, to follow the will of God every day even if he speaks of the Cross, to live in ever greater intimacy with the Lord, in order to bring a little bit of God’s “heaven” to this “earth”. BENEDICT XVI

GENERAL AUDIENCE

Paul VI Audience Hall
Wednesday, 1 February 2012