God's Will

While Jesus was speaking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers appeared outside, wishing to speak with him. Someone told him, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, asking to speak with you.” But he said in reply to the one who told him, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother.” (Matthew 12:46-50)

What is God’s will?  “Here am I, Lord; I have come to do your will.”  This is a familiar refrain from a responsorial psalm.  How many of us really mean that?  It’s quite a commitment that’s supposed to rule our lives – to do God’s will.

We can envision this pledge as one we’d make to a medieval king or queen while kneeling before the throne with hand over heart and head bowed.  “Lord, or majesty, I have come to do your will.” The next question we’d likely ask is: “What do you ask of me?  What is your will?”  We would await the answer.

Here at Christ the King there is no physical throne – just a presider’s chair on which the priest sits for just a short while with most his time spent before the altar. That’s where he does God’s will that we believe involves leading Catholic worship with all of us together in communion as the Body of Christ with the priest acting as Christ's representative.   Part of this worship involves our understanding that God wills our well-being and the well-being of all creation.

God’s will is that we live together in a world of justice, non-violence, and peace.  God’s will is that we be guided by what we see in Jesus such as compassion for the hurt and marginalized, for the least of those among us.

Another way to understand the will of God is provided by Father Richard Rohr who has said: “In the first half of life we usually internalize the voices of parents and teachers that…emphasize obedience to authority. Spiritual directors and confessors know that those internal voices are often mistaken for the voices of God for the rest of our lives. They might be God’s voice, and they might not. Normally the voice of God…is mysterious and un-graspable."

Rohr continues: “Second-half-of-life people, like Jesus and the prophets, live with their wills open to cooperate with God’s creative power. Desmond Tutu, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end apartheid in South Africa, summed this up well when he told me personally, “We are only the light bulbs, Richard, and our job is just to remain screwed in!”  

Are we light bulbs tightly screwed in and doing God’s will?  When we are screwed in, how bright do we shine?  What’s our wattage – 40 or 100 watts?  Well, it really doesn’t matter.  As long as we shine and give off Christ’s light, that’s all that counts.

Deacon David Pierce