Your Will Be Done
Our Lord, upon entering the world, said to his Father, “Here I come to do your will.” By agreeing to be incarnated, Jesus submitted to the obedience of the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph. Speaking to the crowds of Judea, Jesus specified: “My food is to do my Father’s will.” And when He was tormented in Gethsemane, He said: “Not my will, Father, but yours.”
Through his loving obedience, the fullness of his adherence to the will of God, Jesus shows us the path to follow. It is perfect submission to God that has kept the good angels in Heaven, and it is the revolt of others that has precipitated so many of them into the abyss. Disobedience lost man in the Garden of Eden, while perfect submission to the will of God gave birth to the saints of all times and ages.
While it is true that our nature is reluctant to obey or to submit to decisions that sometimes seem arbitrary, or even to rebel against contrary events, we must nevertheless ask ourselves if the Lord does not use these means to soften our own hearts and detach us from ourselves and our self-importance. Besides, is it not enough that we are commanded or demanded of us, for our nature to immediately rebel?
At the beginning of this year, let us make a vow to be more attentive to the Will of God. Faced with events, situations that are beyond our control, let us acquiesce with a great Fiat and remain in Peace.
(Extracts from the advice of Sr Marie du Sacré Cœur Bernaud in the book “Month of the Sacred Heart of 1891” published by the Visitation of Bourg en Bresse.)