I Come to Do Your Will

Homily for Tuesday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time

Both readings for today’s liturgy focus on God’s will for us. In the Letter to the Hebrews, the author writes that Jesus’s life can be expressed in one simple sentence: “I come to do your will.” In the Gospel reading, Jesus makes the statement that “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” The responsorial psalm for today places the words of the psalmist in our mouths and bids us to say to God, “Here I am, I come to do your will.”

We celebrate today the memorial of St. Francis De Sales, Bishop and Doctor of the Church. It is difficult to put in a few words the importance of this man who lived at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. He was born at the time of the Protestant Reformation and just a few years after the Council of Trent, an ecumenical Council by which the church tried to respond to that movement.

In a nutshell: he was a lawyer, a teacher, a writer, a spiritual director, a mystic; and he laid the groundwork for Vatican II’s focus on the “universal call to holiness.” Prayer was essential for him; he didn’t want to do anything for which he hadn’t sought God’s input first. His insistence that people in every stage and state of life are called to holiness connects with Jesus’ words in the gospel: “Whomever does the will of God is [my family].” At various times in the history of the church, it has been thought that only clergy and religious were really called to be holy; lay or family life simply wasn’t a way to grow closer to God. He saw spiritual direction for laypeople as one of his most important ministries as bishop, and wrote in his most famous book, “An Introduction to the Devout Life,” that family life is a path to holiness just as much as religious life. Jesus calls everyone! As Paul wrote to the Hebrews at the end of today’s first reading, Jesus has also consecrated us – the Body of Christ on earth – through the offering of his Body once for all.

St. Francis De Sales’ insight is just as valid today as it was at his time. The universal call to holiness beckons us to do God’s will in our lives. To approach this goal, it is important for us all to remember that this is not a recipe or a checklist for us to accomplish. Rather it is a matter of pursuing a relationship, a relationship which can ask different things of different people at the different times in their lives. It is, therefore, important that we keep the words of the psalmist before us at all times: “Here I am, Lord, I come to do your will.”