Mt 7, 21.24-27
‘It is not anyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” who will enter the kingdom of Heaven, but the person who does the will of my Father in heaven. ‘Therefore, everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a sensible man who built his house on rock. Rain came down, floods rose, gales blew and hurled themselves against that house, and it did not fall: it was founded on rock.
But everyone who listens to these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a stupid man who built his house on sand. Rain came down, floods rose, gales blew and struck that house, and it fell; and what a fall it had!’
To live our faith is crucial.
By sincerely searching the will of the Father, and making that will to our nourishment, as Jesus does it, we may live on a sure ground in all the turmoil of our existence: “My nourishment is to do the will of Him who sent me and to complete his work. ” (Jn 4:34)
Thus, not only must a universal, pious desire remain to do the will of God, but it is required a concrete work on ourselves so that, with the help of God, we can eliminate all that can hinders us to fulfil the will of the Lord.
Sometimes it happens that people are afraid to ask specifically about the will of God. They fear that the will of God may be different from what they wish.
That may in fact be so, because our desires and the associated ideas of happiness no more than our “dreams” must correspond to the will of the Lord. Then, paradoxically, we even feel threatened by the Lord and dodge him. So it easily happens that the old temptation of Paradise takes effect when the devil approaches man and teaches him that God wants to withhold from him the important knowledge of good and evil, and therefore does not grant him something good (cf. Gen 3,1-5).
This is a very subtle temptation that undermines trust in God as our loving Father. But if this trust is weakened, then it is very easy for us to arrange life in some ways according to our wishes, because we want to realize our ideas of happiness and not to question them.
Trust in God is so crucial that we can ask for the will of God without fear, especially in those situations that are clear to us, require a sacrifice in which important decisions are to be made.
If the trust in God and therefore also the love for him grows, then the obedience will no longer be characterized by a tedious “putting one’s interests back”, but he will increasingly get the ease and naturalness of the true love. It is worth remembering one of the words of St. Mary de Guingé: “Nothing is hard when you love God.”
Holy Scripture often seeks our trust in God by showing us the wonderful deeds of God, the countless times he has saved his people, showing us how much God loves us, so that man can understand the love of the Father and so the right image of God and right relationships to God arises.
We can ask for trust in God, but we can also help it to grow. We have not only the written Word of God, but we also can look at and internalize the many situations of our lives in which God protects us, He has led us to His will, which has not always been what we have imagined. Especially when we also include the suffering, the crosses that we have carried, or, the Lord with us and for us, then the trust grows.
If the trust prevails more and more in us, then the Holy Spirit can always appeal to us and urge us to fulfil the will of God and with our participation we will overcome the existing resistance. As the Spirit of piety- one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit- becomes effective in us, it becomes our desire to truly know and want to do God’s will.
In the daily fulfilment of the will of the Lord, love and trust in God grow, his will becomes our food. And just as we rejoice in our earthly life for the meals, the joy grows daily to live in the will of God.
In addition to the universal will of God, which we experience through the Holy Scriptures, the Magisterium of the Church and the corresponding helpful interpretations, we also perceive it through our “inner teacher” the Holy Spirit. He is the one who gives us advice on how to recognize the will of God in concrete situations and also gives us the strength to fulfil it in difficult situations.
If the Lord becomes our foundation in this way, then the house will be built on the rock and the storms will not bring it down.