Post from the Past: Thy Will be Done

Revisiting a series of posts from 2005; original post here.

Thy will be done.

This petition naturally flows from “thy Kingdom come,” and redeems our notions of “the will of God” as something to be resigned to, to be borne with or suffered through.  

Pope John Paul’s Theology of the Body offers a lovely image of the kingdom of God lived on earth as it is in heaven. For John Paul II, the mutual and complete “gift of self” of the persons of the Eternal Trinity was meant to be lived “on earth as in heaven” through the mutual gift of self in life-giving sexual love. To be a person, according to John Paul, is to be a “gift.” This is how God lives in the unceasing and complete self-gift of the Father, the unending receptivity of the Son (whose receptivity is a complete self-rendering in return), and the Person-Gift of the Spirit. “In the divine image, male and female,” human beings have the vocation to live God’s will of perfect love that gives everything without reserve, and receives everything (including the gift of new life) with complete openness. Sin has wreaked untold damage on our capacity for gift and receptivity, and so we continue to pray, “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Earlier posts in this series:
Our Father, Who Art in Heaven
Hallowed be Thy Name
Thy Kingdom Come