Thy Will

Throughout this Lenten season, the Lord has been giving me numerous opportunities to say, “Thy will be done,” to submit myself over and over again to His divine will when it came into conflict with mine. These opportunities have been in small ways, in things outside of my control like other drivers, my garage door not working again, or yet more snow. God has been giving me the grace to see things through a certain lens. He has opened my eyes to perceive that in each of these I have a chance to grow in my capacity of love for Him as I have died to my own will in favor of His. He has allowed me to see the goodness of His plan in these things when at first I only saw inconvenience or annoyance.

These moments of submission, these little deaths, are practice and preparation for the times when it is harder and yet more crucial to pray as Jesus did to the Father before taking up His cross, “Thy will be done.” Near the end of Lent, in my spiritual reading, I read these words, “In the Johannine Pentecost Mary reminds us that being baptized and having received grace and the Holy Spirit doesn’t hinder us from praying for a new releasing of the Spirit. That there must be at least two Pentecosts in our own lives too. That one of these Pentecosts usually takes place beneath the cross, like Mary’s, in submission and love.” (Cantalamessa, Mary Mirror of the Church p. 196) I was struck powerfully by this idea that at the foot of the cross, not only are we united with Jesus, which is grace and blessing surpassing imagining, but also we receive an even greater outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It is in times of darkness, heartache, sorrow, suffering, that we most need to choose God’s will in submission and love. When we do so, the Holy Spirt meets us in that place of pain to refresh, strengthen and comfort us.

On retreat serving high school youth this weekend, one of my ninth-grade girls asked me how to have the grace necessary for martyrdom. She said she had always heard it was a grace you would have in the moment but not before but she wanted to know if there was anything she could do to strengthen her confidence that she’d have that grace if the time ever came. I affirmed the idea that God gives the grace necessary in the moment, but I also shared with her the wisdom God has been teaching me this season. Each day we have a chance to die to self and as we do so in small ways we become accustomed to doing so, building a habit of submission for when we are asked to do so in much larger ways.

Sorrows and suffering are plentiful in this life. Many of them are incomprehensible, we have no words to rationalize them, to give them meaning. Tragedies pierce our hearts, the loss of a child, news that a friend’s cancer has spread, a loved ones abused, leave us grieving. If we try to reason with these sorrows, seeking an explanation for them, asking why, we are left reeling, unsatisfied, and vulnerable to despair. Instead, it is in those moments that we must recall the truth of God’s goodness and love, though we may not feel it, and placing ourselves safely in God’s loving arms, pray once more, “Thy will be done.”