Tuesday of the First Week of Lent

“Your Will Be Done… On Earth As It Is in Heaven.”
 
Today’s gospel passage is Mark’s (6:7-15) version of the Our Father prayer.
 
Because this prayer is both so very rich in content and also so very familiar to all of us, I have decided to focus on just the one verse cited above. And I think also that this particular verse goes very much to the heart and core “of the matter”, if you will.
 
Correctly or incorrectly, I have come to think that at the end of the proverbial day, so much of our faith journey, spirituality, and way of proceeding boils down to our answer to one of two basic questions:
 
“Is it all about me, and therefore my will?
 
Or is it all not about me, and therefore God’s will?”
 
An example of question #1, it seems to me, is being played out concretely and tragically in the halls of the Kremlin and in the country of Ukraine. The imposition of one man’s will.
 
But the same dynamic gets played out on many intervening levels, down to the individual.
 
Around whom does the world ultimately revolve?
 
Do we ask ourselves this question consciously? Of course not. Is it operative “beneath the surface”?
 
Do not so many of our thoughts, actions, decisions, and priorities reflect a subtle but very real notion that the world revolves around us? That we are the center of the universe? (Or is it the case that I am the only one who often thinks this way?!)
 
The Our Father reminds us daily that we are about God’s will, not our own. Jesus reminds us elsewhere that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. It’s not all about me; it’s all about us. The implications and ramifications of this “simple” fact are enormous if we allow them to sink in.
 
“Your Kingdom come, your will be done,….”
 
Father, may YOUR will, not my will, be done. On earth as it is in heaven.