Orthodox icon: Christ and Moses
In his meditation on the perfect all-purpose prayer, I
imagine Yeshua, having hallowed the Name (Baruch
HaShem) and expressed hope for the coming of the malkut, the kingship, the Reign, now turning to the Divine Will.
This flowed naturally from its predecessor: if a king reigns, his subjects do
his will. What is God’s will? The Hebrew ratzon,
when linked to the Deity, leads one directly to the Torah: God’s Will for
Israel – and, eventually, for humanity – is that they keep his commandments,
his statues, his testimonies. By itself the prayer that this be done is large
and seems adequate for a Divine instruction; but Yeshua here added “on earth as
it is in heaven” (ba’arets ka’asher
na’asah vashamayim). In a sense this multiplies it: we pray that His will
may be done on earth, not imperfectly in our usual sloppy human way, but the
way it is done in Heaven, in His own presence, where the Reign is eternal and
accomplished. There, we may imagine, His will is naturally done; and since His nature is Love, the natural doing of
His will is a permanent activity of love, involving all the inhabitants of
Heaven. Although we cannot equal this, we can strive for it.
Whether, when he composed the prayer, he already knew it or
not, Yeshua was (to be) the new Torah: the divine commandments became two, then
eventually one: first, to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind and
strength, and to love our neighbours as ourselves; then, simply, to love and
follow Yeshua Meshiach in everything.
For earthling humans,
though, questions remain. If we are to help bring about that Reign where his
Will is done, we nevertheless ask ourselves, on almost a daily basis, what
God’s will is. In this or that situation, hypothetical, actual or urgent, what
should A do? Similarly, and sometimes even more anguishingly, what, in all that
happens, does so by God’s will? If we say to someone “I’ll see you next month,
Deo volente”, what does that imply?
It is comforting for us to remember that Yeshua himself
faced this problem. When, in Gethsemane, he prays that the bitter cup he faces
may be taken from him, he ends, “Yet not as I will, but as Thou wilt”. In that
case at least, the Father’s will was clear: the Son’s sacrifice had to be
carried through to the end.
We are often, and rightly, taught not to confuse our desire
with God’s will. Even in an apparently good cause, Deus vult is more often than not a projection and thus an error.
Sometimes an attitude of suspicion, particularly toward ourselves, is salutary.
On the other hand, neither should we fall into the trap of assuming the Divine
will always to be the opposite of our own. It is independent of us, and of our desire. How to discern it, then?
I think that the best way is to remember the nature of the
God who wills. His nature is Love. Whatever is congruent with Love at its
highest may safely be considered congruent with His will. Which brings us back
to the conflation of commandments in the new Alliance: 10 > 2 > 1. The eu-angelion, the authoritative good
message, is precisely that: that doing God’s will is no longer a matter of
memorising and following detailed rules, but of being definitively touched by
the absolute, sacrificial Love of the Anointed One, and transforming one’s
heart, mind and life accordingly. We are still stumbling earthlings, and will
never do it as completely or as elegantly as the angels: but that, we may be
assured, will be taken into account.
Once we have been touched by that Love, all we really need
to do is (as I wrote before) to keep our shutters, our windows, and our doors wide
open to the grace that is poured upon us unceasingly: Grace Abounding. It will
fill us gradually, until perhaps one day, like Myriam Yeshua’s Mother, we will
be gratia plena.
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