We continue our deep dive into THE HEART OF CATHOLIC PRAYER.
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In contrast to the Calvinist notion of Irresistible Grace is the Catholic gospel, which insists that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17). In other words, precisely because the Lord is present, we have real freedom to receive or reject him, to do his will, or not. That’s why we pray—because we need his help to do what he commands. Indeed, we need his help even to desire to pray to do as he commands. But as we pray, we become participants, real divinized participants, in the life of the Blessed Trinity at work in the world. And all while remaining the fully human creatures and persons we are. It is the miracle of actually having our cake and eating it.
This is the origin of one of the more obscure Christological controversies in the history of the Church: the question of whether Jesus has one will or two. It would seem that this arcane matter could only be of interest to tightly wound medieval theologians, but really it has everything to do with us ordinary schlubs. If Jesus has no human will of his own, then he’s not our help or guide when he chooses to obey the Father, because he is not fully human. But in fact, being fully human and not just a God who is play-acting, Jesus fully enters into the anguish that we have to go through when we make the hard but right choice. When he sweats blood and gasps out the resolution “Not my will, but yours be done” in Gethsemane, we really can know that he’s been there and that, moreover, he is still there for us when we need to face the bitter cross. He really is fully human and fully God; that’s why he can save us.
“Thy will be done” is, first and foremost then, a prayer of obedience. But it is the obedience of a child to a Father, not of a craven slave to Tash the Inexorable.[1] Jesus makes a choice in Gethsemane—”Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42)—and we are called to make the same choice in little tiny ways each day until it all is consummated in the final offering of our life to the Father through Christ. Shockingly, Scripture tells us that Jesus “learned obedience through what he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8), a statement that makes no sense unless we again grant the full humanity of Christ. When we do, it gives us great hope because it means that God the Son really has borne the fullness of the heartache we bear as we struggle to say “Yes” to the hard work of death to self inherent in “Thy will be done.”
That said, Jesus’ perfect human will means more than simply “he’s been there.” It means that he can help us get to where he is. For as universal human experience makes clear, “uniting our will to God’s” sounds great, but, in the words of the Catechism, we “radically incapable of this” (CCC 2825). Grace is always prior for us because without it we (and the entire created order) could not so much as exist, much less will what God wills. For in addition to the fact that we are creatures, we are also fallen creatures. Creatures who have rebelled against our Creator, who don’t want to know him, who are terrified of knowing him, and who, when we get the chance, nail him to a cross when he enters into our world. We are one messed-up species. Our predicament is just this: the more we need to repent, the less able we are to do it. And boy do we need to repent, as any glance at the headlines—or the mirror—will make clear.
This is why God became man. Not merely to provide an example, but to give us power to do what we cannot do on our own. As Paul puts it:
God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, indeed it cannot; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you. (Romans 8:3-11)
We are enabled to do God’s will because God has assumed human nature, put to death the sin that infected it by a perfect act of surrender to God’s will, raised it from the dead, and glorified it. Man is already in Heaven in the person of Jesus Christ and now the God-man can give us the power to recapitulate what he has done through the Holy Spirit. By our lonesome, that would be impossible. But as we rely on the grace the Holy Spirit gives through the sacraments and trust him to guide us on a daily basis by our efforts to obey the law of love, God can be depended upon to help us do what he desires: his will, which is love.
[1] If that reference is opaque to you, then it’s long past time you read C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1994) with special attention to The Horse and His Boy and The Last Battle.
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