Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Easter / St. Joseph
May 06, 2020 12:00 pm · Sergio Muñoz Fita
FIAT VOLUNTAS TUA: JESUS, THE MAN OF THE ONE IDEA
In the fictionalized biography of Saint Bernard entitled "The Family that Overtook Christ", there is an expression used to refer to one of his brothers, Gerardo. Gerardo was said to be "the man of one idea”. It was a way to underline the determination that always characterized Bernard's brother - when something got into his head, nothing stopped or distracted him from it.
Saints are like this: they are souls of one love. They have only one concern, one fixed idea: to please God and do his Will.
Doing the Will of the Father was the “engine” of the life of Jesus. He, of course, did not use the word "engine", but used the term "food" to express the same thought. When his disciples ask Jesus to eat after meeting the Samaritan woman, the Lord responds saying: “I have food to eat of which you do not know. My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work. ” (Jn 4:32-34).
In his book Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI very clearly explains something that the Church has always known: that, in Christ, the most distinctive feature of his personality and activity is his relationship with the Father. Everything springs from there. When the Word is made incarnate in the womb of Mary, it is done in obedience to the redemptive Will of the Father, who desires to save men. (1 Tim 2:4) And so, in the Letter to the Hebrews, we find the words and attitudes of the eternal Son of God when entering the world: “Sacrifices and offerings, holocausts and sin offerings, you neither desired nor delighted in…Behold, I come to do your will.” (Heb 10:8-9)
And from that first moment, the life of Christ is a continuous walk in the Will of God. The first words that the Holy Gospels record from the Lord are his response to Mary's concern after having lost him in the temple. In the words of that 12-year-old boy, we already find this same attitude: “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s business?” (Lk 2:49) Later, in his public life, the Lord consistently repeats his will to do what the Father has entrusted to him. Permit me just a few expressions from Christ literally quoted from Holy Scripture:
“Amen, amen, I say to you, a son cannot do anything on his own, but only what he sees his father doing; for what he does, his son will do also. (Jn 5:19)
“I cannot do anything on my own; I judge as I hear, and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the one who sent me. (Jn 5:30).
I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me.” (Jn 6:38).
“The world must know that I love the Father and that I do just as the Father has commanded me.” (Jn 14:31)
“I glorified you on earth by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do.” (Jn 17:4)
“My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will.” (Mt 26:39)
It is clear what Jesus' motivation was: in the Our Father, the prayer he invites us to pray, he says: "FIAT VOLUNTAS TUA", "Thy Will Be Done". It is the only attitude that has directed his life, his only intention, the mission that He has pursued to its ultimate end. When he repeats these words again in his prayer on Holy Thursday, sweating blood, he does nothing more than express what He has always carried in his human Heart: an insatiable thirst to fulfill the saving Will of his Father.
It is up to us to live exclusively these same words, not only by imitation but by participation, uniting ourselves to the obedience of Christ, to whom we have been grafted in Baptism as the branches to the vine (Jn 15:1-8), living it from within, with Him and in Him, for the redemption of the world.
