God's Will

Homily for Tuesday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time

The first reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, our psalm response, and the Gospel text from St. Mark all speak to the issue of God’s will. The Hebrew Scriptures, the Christian Scriptures and Quran all speak of God’s will and regard it as the first cause of everything that exists. God created, redeemed and sanctified everything that has come to be in our world and our universe.

The will of God includes everything that God desires or wishes to happen in heaven and on earth. As a result, God has planned what God wishes to occur. The Greek word for “will” is thelma. The word means “what one wishes or has determined will happen.”  In other words, we are to pray that what God has wished or planned is fulfilled. Our lives and plans should agree with God’s plan. We are, therefore, created to do God’s will throughout our lives.

In the Letter to the Hebrews, the sacred author defines God’s will by saying what it is not. God does not want the sacrifice of animals or burnt offerings as a sign of forgiveness. God sent Jesus to show us the way to embrace God’s will in our lives. By God’s "will," we have been consecrated through the offering of the Body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Psalm 40 elaborates the ways in which we fulfill God’s will. We speak of God’s justice, of God’s mercy, of God’s faithfulness and of God’s love when we come together to worship God in our liturgy. Each of these attributes are part of God’s will.

Finally, the Gospel explains that Jesus regards those who do the will of God as his mother, his brothers and his sisters. The family relationship which we share with Jesus is exactly what God intended when God created us and our universe. God’s justice is that right relationship to which we all aspire. We are to give ourselves to God. God acts first by giving us the Body and Blood of Jesus in the Eucharist. To remind us of this, the communion rite of each Mass begins with the Lord’s Prayer in which we pray: “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”