Meditating on the Lord's Prayer with St Genesius
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven
“I have come not to do my will, but the will of my Father”: with these words the Lord Jesus explained why he had come, revealing that he had come in obedience to the will of the Heavenly Father. “Though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but humbled himself and became like a servant” in obedience to the Father’s will. Jesus came to bring us life, the fullness of life, and for life to reign obedience to the will of the Eternal Father is necessary: that his will, not ours, be done. The hardest thing for us as human beings to do is to hand ourselves over to the will of another. Fear, pride, insecurity prevents us from doing so. We cherish our free will, indeed we are jealous to preserve it, and we often find ourselves grounding ourselves in an existential stubbornness to ensure that we do not lose control. And yet this is what not Jesus the Messiah did: he abandoned himself to the will of the Father and in doing so he accomplished the great mission of redemption. The lesson is simple: when we abandon ourselves to God, when his will is done in us, his will is being done on earth; and since he desires that we be saved and we flourish, life here will flourish if his will is accomplished “on earth as it is in heaven”. We will not lose anything in living the will of the Father, but we will gain everything, life on earth and heaven too. St Genesius struggled with this, but in the end he surrendered to the will of God, and that is to his glory: it will lead to ours also.
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