In everyone’s life there comes a point when we start asking, “Why?” Sometimes we ask truly to acquire new and useful knowledge, to understand the subtleties of problems related to us, or perhaps even to fathom our own frailty and limits. However, all too often we ask “Why?” simply to say “No!” to voice our decision that something is useless, to hold off and refuse things, people, decisions.
Why?
Humans are inquisitive by nature. Our rational capacity moves us to understand, find out, explain our surroundings, be it the visible world or, even more so, the invisible realities. We examine the origin of issues, we want to understand and know the cause and purpose of their being.
Why?
Because by understanding the meaning and purpose of the realities surrounding us, we acquire the power to protect and assure our own life and existence. We minimize the probability of risk. We prevent evil. We sustain our own good. Indeed, this is a matter of life and death.
Why did our Lord instruct us to pray that the Heavenly Father’s will be done? To clamp shackles on the free will of man? But it is human nature to make decisions, and the other face of the coin is that we cannot not make a decision. At every step of our existence, we find ourselves making a choice to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.
Now, in order to realize the full potential of our human nature of giving to God what is God’s and to make it bear the fruit of eternal life, we must connect with the ultimate Good, to the power that gave us existence and impressed us with His image. Such connection establishes communion between God and ourself, not a slavery of ownership.
By doing the will of God, we enjoy the freedom of being His child, precisely through the communion of natures; we open our human nature to the visitation of divine truth, and through the power of the supernatural grace of divine inhabitation we share the very life of the Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Our Lord Jesus taught us to pray that the will of our Father be done, to prevent evil, not to allow evil to extend its tentacles on our nature. We must keep the communion of our human nature with the holy will of God through the power of faith planted in us through the sacrament of Baptism. Our example must be our Lord on his cross praying with the words of Psalm 31.5, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit,” giving us the witness of his supreme obedience.
But we must be careful that the “be done” of our prayer not be a wishful desire set on a distant goal, with a hint of little faith—though, judging from human history, it seems to be precisely that. On the contrary, it must carry God’s creative power, must make present the Father’s substance, so that He may resurrect us to the same eternal life of His Son and our Lord Jesus.
