The Secret of Life: Doing the Will of God

The secret of life is really very simple.  It doesn’t entail getting rich, gorging on the finest foods, getting a college degree, drinking the finest wine, enjoying sexual pleasure, or being entertained all of the time. In fact, making those worldly things the center of your life can be counterproductive to attaining the true secret of life. The secret of life is doing the will of God, which is exactly what Jesus said to do:

“For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother.” (Matthew 12:50)

Being a part of Jesus’ family! What could be better than that! When we pray the Our Father prayer, we pray “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Most of us just rattle that phrase off, with no personal meaning attached to it whatsoever, as if we have nothing to do with that becoming a reality. But what it actually means is that you and I are supposed to yearn for God’s holy will to be done on earth, and then to strive to align our human will with His divine will completely. Then, at least in our part of the world, His will shall be done here on earth as it is in heaven,  through our words and actions.

By daily asking God to take over our imperfect will with His divine will, we overcome the devil’s plan of inciting our imagination with impure thoughts (which will eventually degrade and confuse our will, in hopes of aligning it with his demonic will).

The Secret of Life: Doing the Will of God in Scripture

So what is God’s will anyway?  For starters, we know that love of God and neighbor is paramount. How do we know this? Because Jesus left us two new commandments:

And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40)

Love of God and neighbor, of course, means obeying ALL of his commands (John 14:15),  and not just the ones we like, or that are easy to do.  That means forgiving EVERYONE from our heart (Matthew 18:35), returning a curse with a blessing (Luke 6:28), giving alms sacrificially (2 Corinthians 9:6-7) being pure of heart (Matthew 5:8), being humble (James 4:10), etc.  We are not full of God’s  love if we just avoid committing adultery, lying, stealing, cursing, etc. Those things are all necessary of course, but to fully embrace the love of God and neighbor means to also perform good works, to praise God, to thank God, to be truly sorry for all of our sins, and to give freely of our time, talent, and treasure (even if it hurts us to do so).  While doing all of this isn’t easy, by frequenting the sacraments as often as possible to obtain God’s grace (grace is a share in His divinity), it becomes less and less burdensome over time. Eventually, the struggle to do God’s will stops, and it then becomes second nature to us. Our suffering, aka “taking up our cross” and following him to Calvary, is also part of His divine will.

It’s also good to allow God to talk to us through His Word.  St. Jerome, who was the first person to translate the bible into the vernacular of modern people, once said that “Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ.” This is so true. A lot of people say that they don’t have time to read the Bible, because they work a lot for the almighty dollar, and therefore they don’t have time to hear what the Almighty Himself has to say in His Word.  On our deathbeds, we’ll certainly regret having spent so much time searching for money instead of searching for God. The Catholic Church grants a plenary indulgence to those who read the Bible for 30 minutes a day and who fulfill the other requirements.

If one does take the time not only to read the bible, but to also meditate on certain bible passages, he/she will discover a lot about the will of God, which also includes that:

 “He desires all of us to be saved” (1 Timothy 2:4).

No one who is created by God is pre-destined for hell, in spite of what John Calvin and his Reformed Churches falsely teach. And since He gave us free will, we have to freely choose His ways, not man’s ways. If we don’t let our morals be formed by the words of God Himself, then for sure, our morality will become a hodge-podge mixture of what we see on TV and in the movies, what we read in the paper, what our friends “feel“ is right, etc.  And most of that type of morality is based on worldliness, such as unlimited sex is good, abortion is a human right that is wonderful, so-called homosexual “marriage” is in the constitution (it’s not, I looked), etc. In other words, as St. Paul tells us :

For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness” (1 Corinthians 3:19)

We have to align our free will fully with God’s will, so that not only can we relate to him, but that we can also have the mind of Christ, and to do His will at all times. How do we do this? By DAILY asking the Holy Spirit to come into our lives and to help us in our everyday decisions:

“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13)

“The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.  For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 2:14-16)

And when he had removed him, he raised up David to be their king; of whom he testified and said, ‘I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will. (Acts 13:22)

What the Saints Say on Doing the Will of God

 “If, devout soul, it is your will to please God and live a life of serenity in this world, unite yourself always and in all things to the divine will. Reflect that all the sins of your past wicked life happened because you wandered from the path of God’s will.”

“The essence of perfection is to embrace the will of God in all things, prosperous or adverse. In prosperity, even sinners find it easy to unite themselves to the divine will; but it takes saints to unite themselves to God’s will when things go wrong and are painful to self-love. Our conduct in such instances is the measure of our love of God. St. John of Avila used to say: “One ‘Blessed be God’ in times of adversity, is worth more than a thousand acts of gratitude in times of prosperity.”

“The man who follows his own will independently of God’s, is guilty of a kind of idolatry. Instead of adoring God’s will, he, in a certain sense, adores his own. The greatest glory we can give to God is to do his will in everything.” — St. Alphonsus Liguori

“It is not God’s will that we should abound in spiritual delights, but that in all things we should submit to his holy will.’‘ — Blessed Henry Suso

“Those who give themselves to prayer should concentrate solely on this: the conformity of their wills with the divine will. They should be convinced that this constitutes their highest perfection. The more fully they practice this, the greater the gifts they will receive from God, and the greater the progress they will make in the interior life.” — St. Teresa of Avila

“True love of God consists in carrying out God’s will. To show God our love in what we do, all our actions, even the least, must spring from our love of God.” (279) —Diary of Saint Faustina

“I will attempt day by day to break my will into pieces. I want to do God’s Holy Will, not my own!” —Saint Gabriel Possenti

“The goal of all our undertakings should be not so much a task perfectly completed as the accomplishment of the will of God.“ —St Therese of the Child Jesus

 Private Revelation on Doing the Divine Will

 “2000 years after creation came the Great Flood so that the water would cleanse mankind; and 2000 years later, came the flood of the Blood: the Redemption; and still 2000 years hence, there will be the flood of fire a spiritual fire, and finally the Kingdom of the Divine Will will come upon this world: because every creature will fulfill the Divine Will of God in a complete way.”– Luisa Picarretta’s book, The Book of Heaven

“The basic principle is: perfection is in doing God’s Will; God’s Will is clearly expressed with no doubt in the ordinary things of daily life; when it comes to choosing the extraordinary one is always faced with the doubt, is this God’s or my will acting. Forget the hair shirts and keep the rule, forget the sensational and do the ordinary sensationally well, stop looking for the extraordinary and accept the ordinary – this is God’s plan of sanctity.”

‘Doing the Will of God is the key to sanctity. “Be ye perfect, as Your Heavenly Father is Perfect” – a command of Christ to be perfect. An object is perfect in so far as it measures up to the ideal of its maker and performs the job for which it was made. We are made to the image and likeness of God, for God’s glory and our eternal sanctification. “This is the Will of God, your sanctification” – it is God’s Will that we be saints; we become saints by doing the Will of God. Doing God’s Will is loving Him – for love seeks union with its object; our union with God cannot be in body nor emotion (He is pure Spirit), it is in that in which we are His image, mind and heart, intellect and will. Therefore, our objective is to love God, which is accomplished by doing His will – to reach this objective we must:

 (1) Seek to know God’s Will

(2) accept God’s Will

(3) conform to God’s Will – love Him. — Archbishop Paul Leibold of Cincinnati to Sr. Ephrem, page 18

The Catechism of the Catholic Church

To carry out the will of the Father, Christ inaugurated the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Now the Father’s will is “to raise up men to share in His own divine life.” He does this by gathering men around His Son Jesus Christ. This gathering is the Church, “on earth the seed and beginning of that Kingdom.” (541)

Other Quotes

“If you follow the will of God, you know that in spite of all the terrible things that happen to you, you will never lose a final refuge. You know that the foundation of the world is love, so that even when no human being can or will help you, you may go on, trusting in the One that loves you.” — Pope Benedict XVI

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it.” — C. S. Lewis