Posted by The WORD in other words (2009) by Fr Kit Ramirez SVD – Christ the King Seminary, Quezon City
Saturday 23rd Week in Ordinary Time
The heart of a person is revealed to us by his own words or actions. And a heart is made good when the person accepts God’s word and lives by it.
This, in short, is what the Lord is telling us in the Gospel today. And taking his teachings as a whole, we can safely ascertain that a true disciple is the good fruit that he mentions in the Gospel today. And the key to becoming a true disciple is doing what he commands. A command expresses the will of a person giving the command.
Jesus disclosed in John 14 that he was going ahead in order to prepare a place for us, so that where he is there we also may be. Certainly, what he means here is his redeeming act on Calvary that reconciles us to him. And that act which implies a simultaneous self-emptying and self-giving is the most dynamic representation of God’s Will. And if we live according to his will then our lives are surely built on rock, as Jesus finally discloses in today’s Gospel.
This is also expressed in the spirituality of living in the Divine Will that St. Hannibal di Francia is endorsing through a chaplet. He imbibed this spirituality from a candidate for beatification, Luisa Piccarreta, his directee for several years. The chaplet focuses on the central petition in the Lord’s Prayer: Fiat voluntas tua sicut in caelo et in terra. (Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.)
As I read through the 36 volumes, my mind is always brought back to Jesus’ tearful complaint before Jerusalem: “…how many times I yearned to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were unwilling!” (Lk. 13,35) For, indeed, how can we follow God without allowing Him to operate in our hearts! Before her own “fiat,” the Blessed Virgin Mary asked the angel “How can this be…?” And the angel’s simple answer was to this effect: “It is God Himself Who will incarnate God in you” (Lk. 1,35).
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