In my last Vicars Corner article, I mentioned the need to pray in order to know and do God’s will. Prayer is essential in knowing God’s will. Prayer is conversation with God. How can we know what God wants us to do if we do not take the time to ask Him? God speaks to us in the quiet and stillness of our prayer, when we are really listening to Him, when we give Him our full attention. This is why it is so awesome to have access to Eucharistic Adoration in our parish. In Eucharistic Adoration we have the chance to sit in quiet, in front of our God who is physically present, in His divinity and humanity. He wants nothing more than to spend intimate time with us and to tell us how much He loves us. It is in quiet prayer that we come to know what God’s will truly is. If you want to know what is truly God’s will we must pray, pray, pray because this is how He speaks to us, and it is how we allow ourselves to be open to His will.
There are a few things that we should pray for specifically that will help us along the path of being able to know the will of God. As I mentioned in my last article, we need to ask for the grace to be open to God’s will. So, pray for the grace of humility and trust in Him. We should also pray for the grace to be purified from our attachment to sin. Our fallen human nature makes it easy for us to have sinful attachments to worldly things, as well as attachments to sin itself. These attachments negatively influence and skew our own perception of what God’s will is for us and makes it difficult to actually want to do His will. If there are mortal sins in our lives, we should work with all our might to root these out by prayer, fasting, and confession and by taking concrete steps to not commit them again. If we have attachments to worldly things, or to certain sins over and above our love for God, we start to desire things of the world, the flesh, and the devil above the things of God and His Church. It is in being purified of our sins that our will’s become more fully aligned and open to God’s will. So, this is one of the first things that we must ask for when we pray: We must know what areas/attachments within our lives that are sinful and are hurting our relationship with God. Then one must ask for God’s grace and mercy to be healed and purified of these things. This will begin the process for us to more clearly hear the voice of God.
In the process of seeking to know God’s will, it is the Holy Spirit that helps us to know our faults. He also helps us with His strength and courage to know and do God’s will. So, we pray, “Come Holy Spirit and fill the hearts of Thy faithful and enkindle in them the fire of Thy love. Send forth Thy Spirit, and they shall be created. And Thou shalt renew the face of the earth!”
Fr. Jacquemin
