Our will needs to be properly anchored

By Fr. Roy Cimagala *

WHEN Christ was told that his mother and relatives were around and would like to see him, he said it very clearly that his mother and brothers and sisters are those who do the will of his heavenly Father. (cfr. Lk 8,19-21)

The response of Christ is a clear indication that for us to be part of God’s family, as we should since we are not only ordinary creatures of his but rather the masterpiece of his creation since we have been created in his image and likeness, our will should channel and reflect the will of God. 

Our will should not just be floating around on its own, thinking that it is how it enjoys its freedom. We need to acknowledge that our will is a creation of God and is meant to be united to God’s will since we have been created in his image and likeness. We need to acknowledge the truth that our real freedom is when our will is united to the will of God.

This, definitely, is not an easy task to do, given the fact that it is precisely in our will where we choose whether we would like to be with God, to be part of his family, or to be simply on our own. And given how we handle this issue, starting with our first parents all the way to the present, we always have the strong tendency to think that our will is simply our own.

We therefore have to be strongly wary of this danger and do everything we can to avoid it. I suppose it goes without saying that we need to be frequently reminded that our will needs to be anchored on the will of God. That’s how our will acquires its proper status.

We have to learn to live always by God’s will. 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. 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.

We have to realize that 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 also ‘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.

It would be equally absurd to speculate that we cannot know the origin of the universe, or that the whole cosmos just came to be more or less spontaneously, directly contradicting a basic principle that from nothing, nothing comes.

In the end, we have to realize that we can only be in the orbit of truth and everything that is good when we unite our will with the will of God. The only thing to happen when we are not united with God’s will is to sin, to do evil.

Let’s follow the example of Mary who with her ‘Fiat’ during the Annunciation opened the path of our reconciliation with God.

* Chaplain Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com