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The Southern Cross, Page 8 Thursday, December 21, 2000 Thy will, not my will, be done By Father Richard Rice, SJ Catholic News Service 1 .t is sometimes so diffi cult to realize that the peti tion is “Thy will be done,” not “my” will be done. I led a community of family and friends in cel ebrating the sacrament of the sick with Rosalie. As one of her family said, “From the housetop we are praying, ‘Thy will be done,’ but in the basement we are pleading, ‘Heal Rosalie of her cancer.”’ Our will was her physi cal healing. Her funeral a year later revealed that God’s will was her deeper healing and that of her family and friends in her death. Few words reveal the humanity of Jesus so com pletely as the agonizing prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me, still not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). We are a long way at this point from the serene hillside of Gali lee where Jesus had taught his followers to pray “like this: Our Father ... thy will be done” (Matthew 6:10). On that Galilee hillside, it had been easy for Jesus to say the words; now it was excruciatingly diffi cult for him to pray them. We all, like Jesus, have known both the ease and the agony of a central peti tion of the Our Father, “Thy will be done.” I have prayed that my nephew Brian might star in basketball. He basically took up space on the bench. I was slow to admit that the humiliation was a great grace for him and for me. I have prayed for two young women that they would meet men who would be suitable marriage partners. Both are still single, hav ing to call on all their inner re sources to live the single life grace fully. (That one I do plan to question God about at the end.) As I reflect on the conversation God and I have been engaged in all my life, I realize I often have been given nothing that I expected, but everything that I have most deeply wanted. I and those I have been pray ing for have been given peace, humil ity, integrity, love and patience. After 59 years I am beginning to realize that God’s track record is quite amazing and now, more and more, I am simply saying, “Thy will be done for Megan and for Molly to day. You know so much better than I what they need, and you care for them so much more than I do, much as I love my dear nieces.” I am saying much the same when my prayer turns to India and Paki stan and Israel and Palestine. Trust CNS photo by Bill Wittman is built on a continuity of care, and I slowly am realizing that God does care for this universe which he breathes into existence at every mo ment. ■ ■ ■ The words “thy will be done” are mirrored in other great prayers and statements. For so many traditions FOODFORTHOUGHT realize that it contains the first and greatest submission of the creature to the Creator. For example, St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, ends his “Spiritual Exercises” with the famous prayer, “Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my entire ‘will.’” All contents copyright©2000 by CNS And the third of the 12 Steps — the principles followed in Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon, Parents Anonymous and other groups — is: “Make a decision to turn our ‘will’ and our lives over to the care of God.” Simple words, but not always easy to say. ■ ■ ■ One of the greatest gifts God has given us as human creatures is our freedom and our wills, the power to choose, to make decisions. Usually we presume our wills and God’s are the same. As long as we are experiencing the fruits of the Holy Spirit, such as love, joy, peace, patience and gentle ness (Galatians 5:22,23), that pre sumption is just fine. The fruits of the Holy Spirit are God’s seal of approval on our choices. The problem comes when things do not go our way, we do not get the position we applied for, or our child does not get accepted by the college she so wanted to attend. We now be gin to experience the fruits of the evil spirit that St. Paul also carefully enu- hen we experience our agonies in our gardens, it can be consoling to remember that Jesus was there in his life and is with us now in ours. merates: jealousy, rage, selfishness, dissensions, factions, envy (Galatians 5:20,21). At that moment, pray God we real ize that our will and God’s will are not harmonious. We now have the choice to surrender or to manipulate, to en trust ourselves or to become “control freaks,” as our young like to say. When we experience our agonies in our gardens, it can be consoling to remember that Jesus was there in his life and is with us now in ours. (Jesuit Father Rice is a spiritual director with Loyola, a spiritual re newal resource in St. Paul, Minn.) It goes against the grain to say “thy will be done” — at least it often feels that way. We value our ability to plan things, put things in order and accept responsibility for ourselves and others who depend on us. I think we learn from early childhood that exercising control over ourselves is praiseworthy, as is clarity about what we want in life. 1 also think most of us sometimes are sure that we know what is best — for us, for our children, for our neighborhoods, even for our country. So those words from the Our Father, “thy will be done,”pose a challenge. If nothing else, they suggest that the Lord’s Prayer shouldn’t be taken too lightly. What are we really saying? We’re not saying that we shouldn’t accept our responsibilities or be clear about our priorities. But we are saying something important about the limits of our understanding and about the real extent of our control over people and events. And we’re saying that God is actively present in our world, albeit sometimes in perplexing ways. I suspect it is important to acknowledge at some point that the words “thy will be done” seem to go against the grain. I also suspect that people grow in spirituality when they begin to grasp why those words really don’t go against the grain. 44 David Gibson, Editor, Faith Alive!