The Daily Gospel

«Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.» John 6,68 Thursday, 19 June 2008 Thursday of the Eleventh week in Ordinary Time Today the Church celebrates : St. Romuald Saint Teresa of Avila : «Your will be done» Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 6,7-15. In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. This is how you are to pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread; and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors; and do not subject us to the final test, but deliver us from the evil one. If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions. Commentary of the day : Saint Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), Carmelite, Doctor of the Church Way of Perfection, ch.32 (©ICS publications) «Your will be done» «Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.» O my Lord, what a great comfort this is for me, that you didn't want the fulfillment of Your will to depend on a will as wretched as mine!... I'd be in a fine state, Lord, if it were up to me as to whether or not Your will were to be done! Now I freely give mine to You, even though I do so at a time in which I'm not free of self-interest. For I have felt and have had great experience of the gain that comes from freely abandoning my will to Yours. O friends, what a great gain there is here! Oh, what a great loss there is when we do not carry out what we offer to the Lord in the Our Father!... Well, I want to advise you and remind you what His will is. Don't fear that it means He will give you riches, or delights, or honors, or all these earthly things. His love for you is not that small, and He esteems highly what you give Him. He wants to repay you well, for He gives you His kingdom while you are still alive... Well, see here, daughters, what He gave to the one He loved most. By that we understand what His will is. For these are His gifts in this world. He gives according to the love He bears us... according to the courage He sees in each and the love each has for His Majesty. He will see that whoever loves Him much will be able to suffer much for Him; whoever loves Him little will be capable of little. I myself hold that the measure for being able to bear a large or small cross is love... Everything I have advised you about in this book is directed toward the complete gift of ourselves to the Creator, the surrender of our wills to His, and detachment from creatures - and you have understood how important this is-I'm not going to say any more about the matter; but I will explain why our good Master teaches us to say the words mentioned above, as one who knows the many things we gain by rendering this service to His eternal Father. For we are preparing ourselves that we may quickly reach the end of our journey and drink the living water from the fount we mentioned. Unless we give our wills entirely to the Lord so that in everything pertaining to us He might do what conforms with His will, we will never be allowed to drink from this fount.