TRIUMPH OF THE WILL?

After the Kingdom – or the kingship, the reign – the Will. Fiat voluntas tua: Thy will be done. We say it, often mechanically, as the third petition, or option: “may” or “let” Thy will be done – the verb is an optative, a mood of hope or encouragement. In the present case, of course, it may also be one of resignation. But how often do we really concentrate on what it means, what it can mean, what it might mean?

            The first stage of thinking about it is one of humility. Not my will, Lord, but Thy will be done. It is a phrase of obedience. You lead, Lord, and I will follow. Even if I think I want fishhooks (remember Tom Sawyer?), the fact that I don’t get them when I’ve prayed for them means, presumably, that Your will is for me not to get them. Oh well, I guess there’s nothing I can do about it: Thy will be done.

            But think some more. Where have we heard that phrase “not my will, Lord, but Thy will be done” before? That’s right. It leads straight to Gethsemane, and via Gethsemane to the Cross. It gets very serious indeed. You can get dead that way.

            Now keep thinking. Because it also leads us to a major problem. Christ, in Gethsemane, knew what His Father’s will was, or at least He had a pretty good idea, even though He was human enough to hope and pray it wouldn’t happen. But when we try to apply the phrase in our own lives, we run up against the serious fact that most of the time we do not know what His will is.

            I saw a photograph of a hand with W W J D tattooed on four fingers: What Would Jesus Do? It’s one way out of the problem: let our imagination suggest to us what He would do in present circumstances. But we are not called to be Jesus, and I’m not always sure we are even all of us called to be Disciples: there were only twelve of those, while there were hundreds, thousands, who were touched by Him and whose lives were changed. W W T D – What Would They Do?

            The second problem with this is that we’re depending on our imagination, which is a useful servant but an uncertain master. In fact, what “Thy will be done” should lead us to is Discernment. This quality, mentioned quite often by St Paul, is in its simplest form the capacity to tell good from bad; but as life is complex and the human mind was created to be a fine instrument, we can and should take Discernment further. At its best, discernment is the use of human reason in the support of faith.

            The relation of faith to reason is the chief topic with which the remarkable writings of Pope Benedict XVI are concerned; and in his little guide Doctors of the Church he reminds us that it is the essential element in the teachings of St Thomas Aquinas. Not only, said Aquinas, does faith illuminate reason; reason can be very good at underpinning, supporting and protecting faith.

            In other words, “Thy will be done” leads us down two paths. One is to using the minds God gave us: instructing them by reading (serious Jews read far more of their faith’s writings that Christians tend to), training them to analyze situations, and using them to help our faith live and work in the world. The other leads to the Cross. And there I am reminded of the final words of the great John Donne’s final sermon, “Death’s Duel”, on the text “To God the Lord belong the issues of death”, preached at Whitehall before King Charles I at the beginning of Lent, 1630. Donne was dying; and some in the congregation said that the Doctor was preaching his own funeral sermon. And he ended it with these words:

There we leave you in that blessed dependency, to hang upon him that hangs upon the cross, there bathe in his tears, there suck at his wounds, and lie down in peace in his grave, till he vouchsafe you a resurrection, and an ascension into that kingdom which He hath prepared for you with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood. Amen.