The Will of God

Today we hear in the Gospel: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” How much do I love God? How much am I ready to do anything for him? It is as simple as that. Love is not feelings but uniting our will to the will of God. Marriage is to become one, in body and soul, in will and spirit. You love somebody when you are ready to do his or her will. When two people marry, they give themselves to the other person in a way that they don’t belong to themselves anymore. From then on they need to think what the other person wants them to do. The problem is when one or both don’t give themselves completely to the other, when they keep a single attitude. They end up living two separate lives. Our union with God, says Saint John of the Cross, resides in the union of our will with His, and is measured entirely by that union. The more we unite ourselves to God’s will, the more we become him, until we reach a moment when there is only one will, His.

God has given us a free will to be able to love him. Love cannot be compulsory. People complain about evil in the world, why God allows bad things to happen. It is because he has made us free. He has run the risk and the adventure of our freedom. In marriage there is normally an infatuation at the beginning, when you are attracted to a person and you fall in love. But afterwards marital love requires an act of the will: I love this person because I want to, because he or she is my spouse, independently of my feelings. Sometimes we feel it, many times we don’t feel it, and other times maybe we feel the opposite.

Imagine you have two workers. One is a hard worker, but he does his own thing. The other is a bit lazy, but he does what you want him to do. Which one do you prefer? The one who does your will; the other is useless. It is the same with God. We can be very busy but doing our own thing. Saint Augustine has a beautiful expression: bene curris sed extra viam; you run well, but off the path. God prefers that we follow his will, rather than spend the whole day in church.

God has designed the path he wants us to follow. It is there to be walked. Do you remember those old drawings in the magazines, where all you had to do was to draw the line between the dots? Then a nice figure appeared. The Holy Spirit has punched the dots. All we need to do is unite the dots every day, just the dot in front of us, without knowing what thedrawing is going to look like. You cannot see what you are doing looking forward; you can only see it looking backwards. The only way to see what the figure looks like is from the air, from above, from an eagle or a drone view, through God’s eyes.

What’s important is the attitude we have in front of God’s will. It is easy to follow him when his will is the same as ours. It is harder when there are two different wills, his will and our will. There are different stages in conforming our will to his will. We start with resignation, a negative word; we move to desire to love his will; once we manage to accept his will, we begin to love it. And we end up abandoning ourselves in his hands. Like a baby is left in his mother’s arms. A baby doesn’t have a will. It is a pure instinct of letting himself be loved.

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