Tuesday of First Week of Lent

March 11, 2003

To prepare my sermons I often read great authors like Hemingway, Shakespeare, T.S. Elliot, and C.S. Lewis, but nothing has the ability to impact and shape my life's attitudes like the word of God, which touches at the very core of our being.

Isaiah tells us today—“it penetrates like a fire or a flood”-‑both symbols used powerfully at the Easter Vigil‑‑the most important liturgy of the year. It comes with a power to warm or to burn; to carry away or to refresh and cleanse.

In today's passage we are told that it descends like a gentle rain and produces an abundant flowering of holiness. The first flower that buds forth in this beginning of Lent is Jesus teaching of the Lord's prayer‑‑immediately following his teaching of the Beatitudes, which we spoke of yesterday.

We spoke of forgiveness and mercy, letting go of resentment and intimidation‑‑and we dare to say: “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”

Today I would rather focus on a different verse perhaps equally challenging to accept, namely: "Thy will be done". Again and again when we say this prayer, whether alone, in liturgy, out loud or in the quiet of our souls; but the nervous question always arises: Am I praying this honestly?

Do I fear that my own will plays tricks on me? That is exactly what Jesus as a human was experiencing in the desert in the gospel we heard Sunday. But his answer then was the same answer that he would give in the Garden of Gethsemane —“Father if there is another way, let it be, but not my will, thine be done.”

Everything throughout his life, however challenging, was consistent with His Father's will. In the Lord's Prayer Jesus teaches us to pray for that same consistency. Just as He had to pray for it‑‑ so no less should we.

This prayer formed in the heart of God's own son and heard form the lips of his disciples in every century presents the condition without which even the Lord's prayer will not make us acceptable to God.

Even mercy and forgiveness, as essential as they are, can only be found in the surrender and acceptance of God’s will‑‑only there do we find peace and life.