God’s will and our will

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

THE ideal condition for us with regard to our own will is that it should unite itself with God’s will. It should identify itself with God’s will and channel it as faithfully as possible all throughout our earthly sojourn.

This should come as a no-brainer if we consider the basic truth of faith that we have been made the image and likeness of God. How God is should also be how we should be. We are meant to share in God’s own life and nature!

That’s, of course, an incredible piece of truth that we just have to learn to live by. If we are guided by our Christian faith as we should, since it in the end is what defines how we and everything else should be, then we can have no other conclusion to make than that one!

We are reminded of this aspect of our life in that gospel episode where Christ told the crowd that he came down from heaven not to do his own will but rather the will of the one who sent him. And that the will of the one who sent him was that he should not lose anything and anyone who was given to him, but that he would rather raise those who believe in him to eternal life. (cfr. Jn 6,38-40)

That episode in effect tells us that just as Christ, who is the pattern of our humanity and the savior of our damaged humanity, would only do the will of his Father, the one who sent him to save us, so should we also do nothing other than to do the will of God, our Father, who as our Creator, defines who we really are and how we should live our life.

This, in the end, is what is most important to us. It’s not just following our will which is, of course, indispensable to us. Otherwise, we would be undermining our very own freedom and our humanity itself. Whatever we do is done because we want it. It should be a fruit of our freedom.

But what is even more important is to conform our will to God’s will, which is most indispensable to us. Otherwise, we sooner or later would destroy our freedom and our humanity itself, since God is the very author and the very lawgiver of our freedom and our humanity.

This is a basic truth that we need to spread around more widely and abidingly, since it is steadily and even systematically forgotten and, nowadays, even contradicted in many instances. These days, we seem to be redefining and distorting the truth about ourselves as God made and defined it. We need to inculcate this truth to children as early as when they can understand and appreciate it. Then let’s give them the example of how it is lived.

God’s will is the source of everything in the universe. The whole of creation in all its existence, unity, truth, goodness and beauty starts from God’s will and is maintained by it. The entire range and scope of reality—be it material or spiritual, natural or supernatural, temporal or eternal—is “contained” there, not only theoretically but ‘in vivo.’

It would be absurd to believe that the whole reality can be captured by our senses and feelings alone, or by our intelligence that is working on its own and producing the arts and the sciences that we now have and that we continue to discover.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com