Thy will be done. How often do we pray this simple prayer? It is prayed at every Mass. It is prayed morning and evening in the Liturgy of the Hours. We pray it six times with every rosary. It is at the heart of the Lord’s Prayer. After first praising God’s name and before we dare to ask our own petitions, we declare that what we want first, before all else, is for God’s will to be done. But do we know what it is we pray for? What does God want? More specifically, what does God want for my life? How are we to know?
If we wonder what God wills regarding the minutiae of our life, or even the major decisions we are called to make, the answer can seem frustratingly elusive. Should I apply to grad school? Whom should I marry? Should I marry at all, or is God perhaps calling me to a different vocation? Should we homeschool our children or send them to public or private school? Should I uproot my family and take that out-of-state job? Certainly these are all questions we should bring to prayer, but God rarely offers a clear and direct answer.
But if we zoom out to look at the bigger picture, what God wants for us is not difficult at all to discern. He tells us quite plainly. He wants us to have life. “I came that you might have life,” Jesus says, “and have it abundantly” (Jn 10:10).
A short time after He speaks these words, Jesus demonstrates it in the flesh by raising Lazarus from the dead. Lazarus is four days dead in the tomb. Jesus calls out into the depths of Sheol and says, “Lazarus, come out,” and out he walks (Jn 11:43-44). The raising of Lazarus is but a foreshadowing of the resurrection of our Lord on Easter Sunday, the first fruits of the general resurrection we will all experience, the unrighteous to eternal torment but the righteous to eternal life (Mt 25:46).
God desires our happiness
God wants us to have eternal life, which is to say a share in His own divine life. Whatever else God may want for our lives is secondary to this baseline fact: God’s will is that we have life and eternal happiness with Him forever. Every time we pray for God’s will to be done, we pray for our own good.
But do we want this for ourselves? And are we willing to do what’s necessary to get it – to walk through the door Christ has opened for us? Accepting God’s will for us, as glorious and benevolent as it is, doesn’t come without difficulties. Before Easter there is Good Friday. Before the resurrection comes the cross. Before life – paradoxically – there must be death. Jesus has a track record of standing our expectations on their head. We think the rich are blessed and the poor are cursed, but He tells us just the opposite. We think the first are first and the last are last, but He says the last shall be first. We think the right order is life then death, but the author of life and the conqueror of death tells us it’s the other way around.
This gives Christians a very unique outlook on death and suffering. We ought to approach our trials in the same way that Jesus approached His Passion. In the Garden of Gethsemane, on the night before He died, our Lord prayed that the cup of His suffering be taken from Him if possible. But then He prayed, “Not my will, but Thy will be done” (Mt 26:39, Mk 14:36, Lk 22:42).
It is perfectly all right for us to bring our suffering to God in prayer, lay it before our loving Father and ask for it to be taken from us. But when we pray “Thy will be done,” we know and trust that if God allows our suffering then it must be for our good, for God works all things for the good of those who love Him (Rom 8:28). So we accept any hardship we must endure as a grace from the One who loves us perfectly and knows better than us the right remedy for our particular ills.
Just as the Father was able to bring the salvation of man out of the suffering and death of His Son, so He is able to bring us through the trials of whatever crosses we bear to the glory of the resurrection. We know this because God’s will is for our life and happiness. His will is to share His glory and reign with us as His adopted children. This is what He wants for us; He knows exactly what it takes to get us there and will do all that is necessary to bring it about.
Is this also what we want? Do we mean it when we pray that God’s will be done on earth – that is to say, in our lives – as it is in heaven? To say “yes” to that question is to invite Jesus to live out His Paschal Mystery in your life. Once we say, like Mary, “Be it done unto me according to your word,” (Lk 1:38), then whatever follows after that “yes” will be for our good. Just like the joyful mysteries and the sorrowful mysteries of the rosary lead to the glorious mysteries, all the joys and sorrows of our life on earth will lead us to the great glory of heaven.
Deacon Matthew Newsome is the Catholic campus minister at Western Carolina University and the regional faith formation coordinator for the Smoky Mountain Vicariate.