Thursday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time
“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Our tradition and our faith suggest that we do not know the way to eternal happiness and must depend on God to show us the way. This contrasts with all the voices of our culture and even of our own psyche and reason, which suggest the opposite: that happiness comes from achieving our own will, our own potential, our own goals. Yet, even if we sincerely desire to do God’s will rather than our own, our experience confirms that it is very difficult to know God’s will.
But there is a way to follow God’s will without knowing it or understanding it. There is a way to be confident that we are following God’s will even though we can’t say with certainty what exactly his will is. In my own life, I am confident that it is God’s will, not only mine, that I am a monk, meant to be a member of this community, and that I do the work that God wants me to do. I know this by faith, not by reason. Sometimes that faith is tested, and I must make an act of faith that I am on God’s path rather than simply my own. We walk by faith in this regard, not by sight, but that is God’s will.
Reflection by Abbot Benedict Neenan, OSB
Posted in Articles for Ordinary Time, Daily Reflections