My will or Yours be done, Lord?

We want to decide to keep control of what can happen to us. We want to do what we want, and when we want, we have the firm conviction that we have the legitimate right to do everything we have decided, at the time we choose, where we want, with whom we want... And we have this pride - this is how the English word pride, so appreciated today, is translated, which we can also translate as arrogance. We have this feeling of self-sufficiency that fills us with what we call self-realization.

However, it happens that some obstacles are harder to overcome than others or are completely insurmountable. Or they come back as if by irony before us, as if they were defying us, while we thought they had disappeared. These obstacles that reduce and limit the expansion of our ego that we wanted to be irresistible can be of all kinds: material, technical, financial, physical, physiological, sanitary, accidental, emotional, psychic, family, sociological, historical, meteorological... There are so many of them!

Then, what do we do? Well, depending on the person – once again – we get angry, believing in our own strength, in our resources and skills, and we stand up, fight by all means, we tense up, we defend ourselves, we fight... or we get angry, but differently, rather with resentment, blaming others, we get indignant, we rebel, we manifest... Or we are suddenly powerless, dejected, discouraged, even desperate, suicidal or simply resign ourselves to bitterness. In all these cases, we maintain the conviction that we can, that we could or could have controlled our lives to obtain what was due to us, by our merit or by our most legitimate right, and by a certain idea of ​​what justice must or should be.

Many times, if we fail to obtain what we want, then we appeal... to others! But this fact does not create problems for us; we do not experience this as a contradiction. Until that moment, we claimed our ability to control our lives and our right to obtain, alone, what we wanted as we pleased, without worrying about others. And we continue to do so, even with difficulty and obstacles. At the same time, we claim, without a state of mind, the duty of others to take care of us if we are in trouble

This is the case with those who, in our wonderful era of irresistible progress, want to take risks in assisting others, claimed politically, morally, and legally, as inevitable. This is the case with those who gamble with their health by indulging in all kinds of excesses or exceeding the limits imposed by nature, from athletes who want to have the thrill of near death without dying to elderly women who want to give birth, realizing, brutally, that they have missed something important in their lives, without wanting to sacrifice their career or collection of lovers, their advantageous physique or their feminist beliefs at the right time. This is the case with those who want to get drunk without stopping with all kinds of substances and sink into the hell of addiction. This is the case with all those who want to enjoy unbridled and without precautions all the seductive bodies, according to their legitimate sexual preference, encountered in passing. This is the case with those who want a perfect and eternally youthful body, according to the canons of contemporary aesthetics, and who poison themselves with unsafe drugs or end up being disfigured by surgical techniques that have not yet been tried or made from a material whose sanitary reliability has not yet been verified. This is the case – as has been seen recently, on a large scale – with those who want to take financial risks with other people's money.

Then the real questions arise:

• Who controls what?
• Who really controls what?
• Who is free from what?
• Who is responsible for what?
• Who can claim to be without others?
• Who can claim to despise others?
• Who can be proud of what?
• Who is dependent on whom?
• Who can be without whose opinion?

Another attitude is that of the one who patiently waits for things to happen by themselves, with a feeling that everything will happen as if by magic, at the desired moment... It is one of the attitudes of contemporary wisdom: "It will happen, calm down, be zen, what you want will happen, do visualizations, meditation, repeat special mantras - without forgetting the stages, accessories, etc. And you will see: what you want will happen, you will regain your health, you will find love, prosperity, youth, beauty..."

And then there is the attitude of the one who knows nothing or who knows that this claim to total control, this flight from reality, is vain. The one who abandons himself to the Divine Will of which, moreover, he understands nothing and about which he barely knows how to express himself, by what means, at what moment, through whom. The latter is mainly concerned with cultivating his garden, that is, above all, with watching over the material and spiritual needs of the family, to the extent of his means and skills – and then with working on himself, to the extent he can, according to the talents that have been entrusted to him in life since birth and rebirth through baptism, in the unwavering conviction that his own efforts, even in this spiritual field, will be in vain without the grace of God, which he is not sure of obtaining.

True self-control and control of life is in the miraculous attitude of the thief on the right, the one whom the Lord assured that he would be in His Kingdom at the very moment of death. Nailed to the cross in total inability to change anything in his life, whether it is his criminal past or his present, painfully nailed to the cross or his imminent death, he turns his gaze to the One who alone saves, Who is “the Way, the Truth and the Life” – after having recognized his mistakes, after having confessed the innocence of the sacrificed Lamb at the same time. Paradoxically, he abandons himself to his Lord in trust and obedience, with this prayer: “Remember me, Lord, in Your Kingdom!”

The one who has this attitude says every morning, upon waking, this short prayer extracted from the Our Father: “Your will be done!” And, again, this excerpt from the Great Doxology: "Blessed are You, Lord, teach me Your Will! Blessed are You, Master, make me understand Your Will! Blessed are You, Lord, enlighten me with Your Will!".