Thy Will Be Done

Ever since seeing The Passion of the Christ years ago when I was at Western, the story of Jesus and His suffering has taken on new meaning for me. I think film can be such a gift to the world in its ability to captivate us and help us to actually visualize the way some stories were or may have been.

One of the many compelling scenes that stood out to me was the opening scene, where Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying, begging God to take this cup away but praying all the same "Your will be done."

I have said this same prayer at various crossroads in my life, some of the recent few being in times of waiting. Waiting to hear the VIN number was fine and we could take the truck back home, waiting to hear that the baby would be ok and it was all a big scare. I prayed in those moments over and over again, "Your will be done, Your will be done," sure that God's will would be my own, sure that in spite of my worry, everything would turn out ok.

I wonder if anyone else has ever prayed like me, begging God for His will to be done, and then had to face that moment of total shock and confusion when the news comes and it's not the miracle you thought you asked for.

I'm sure that in his humanness, Jesus, too would have preferred that God could save the world some other way- maybe He envisioned that at the moment of betrayal there in the garden, God could have Jesus escape his condemnation with a bold fight or by flying up above those who came to take him away. He could have disappeared and reappeared or worked some miracle to amaze and impress everyone with his power. That would have been story-worthy, proud, happy. That would have been grand and comfortable and marvelous.

There are so many ways that Jesus or his Blessed Mother could have, and maybe did, rewrite the story of salvation in their minds. In the end, though, their prayer was that God's will be done, and, as they are much holier than me, I imagine their prayer came out of a more sincere trust in God's will than my own.

I have been left questioning, though, if suffering is actually God's will. It seems that many people would say it is a part of God's plan and that it does lie somewhere in the dimension of Her plan for us, though I feel like it's normally talked about in a very general kind of way. Having a social justice background in me, I know that many times we take the "status quo" and "suffering" for granted as "God's will" when, in fact, it is our failure to our fellow human beings that causes much of the suffering and pain and hurt in the world.

Did God will Jesus to suffer? Was the way it all happened, specifically, with the betrayal and the rooster and the beatings and the cross all laid out in some all -purposeful plan long before Jesus was ever born into the world? We have analyzed and dissected every moment of recorded history in the last moments of this man's life, finding symbolism and meaning in every movement, but is it the only way this story could have gone that would have been as incredible?

Did God will Jesus to suffer or did God simply allow it? Some may say it's equally horrendous to will suffering or to allow it, but for me, there is a distinction. It is difficult for me to comprehend an all good and loving God imposing suffering on people to bring about a greater good. I suppose you could see it like a child being put in time out, where for them, it is suffering, but it is really for a bigger lesson than they can understand at the moment.

At the same time, if you follow my thought that God, being All Good and All Loving, does not impose suffering, but rather allows it, because God wants and is love and true love requires freedom and true freedom requires us to have free will and free will requires the possibility of making mistakes and has led us into a "fallen world" than I wonder if God really chose suffering for Jesus or rather allowed it, because love could not exist without an option to hate (or fear) and life would not exist without death and salvation without suffering would be meaningless. What is it then that we would be saved from, if not from suffering?

And I wonder if, in my own life, God has allowed suffering not because She wants to punish me before She rewards me or wants to teach me a lesson, but because She is sovereign over everything and just as She could bring salvation to the world through the brutal and tragic death of Her innocent son, She can bring good through this.

The key is in the prayer. "Thy will be done." Jesus prayed that, if possible, God take this cup from Him. All of us probably do the same and beg God to be spared from suffering, as it always hurts and more often than not, leaves scars that never fully disappear. But maybe Jesus's prayer, "Thy will be done" was less about asking God to change the circumstances and more about asking that God fulfill Her will in Jesus.

I have always had this secret thought that if you don't get what you pray for, then maybe you should change your prayer. It's helped me mature in my prayer life from asking for new toys to asking for blessings in the lives of loved ones. I thought I couldn't do better in a prayer than "Your will be done" How much closer can you get to what God wants of you? Yet, when I am shocked that God does not provide what I consider "justice" or does not save innocent lives, even my own baby girl, I must consider that His will is not only in the circumstances but in what He asks of me through the circumstances that face me.

Sometimes we're faced with bad news and I don't think it necessarily means we didn't pray enough or that God is intentionally "putting us through this" to "test us" or "see what we're made of" or teach us something. I think She allows it because true love has to allow it. As much as parents may want to put their children in cardboard boxes at a certain point to protect them from the world, to protect them from the suffering that is out there, doing that would not be the loving choice. When children walk, they can fall down, when they drive, they can get into accidents, when they date, they can get their hearts broken, when they get pregnant, they can lose their babies... but just as parents don't push their children down to show them how it feels, I don't think God inflicts pain just to put us through it.

Like a mom holds her child when he falls off his bike, so God does with us. Of course, his knee is still scraped- Mom can't make the scratch go away or make it instantly stop bleeding, as much as she would want to. The pain is still there- all she can do is hold him. And, God, though it's within His capacity to physically heal us, meets us in our broken world, with the relative and limited boundaries of science and smatterings of miracles to turn our attention toward the presence of divinity in our midst.

Hearing a baby's heartbeat, watching a kicking baby on an ultrasound, giving birth to a healthy, living baby is a miracle because each and every time, there is a real possibility there won't be a heartbeat, the baby won't move or the baby won't be born healthy or living. My aunts, my sisters in law, my friends, and even my mother celebrate their children as miracles because what happened to me and my baby was allowed to happen. Miracles wouldn't be miracles if they always happened. We have to see and experience suffering to appreciate the divine.

Thy will be done, I now pray more openly than ever before, knowing that the road may be long and suffering I never could have anticipated may await me, but it's less about what I'll go through and more about who you'll make me and how you'll use me on the journey. I don't know how I'll be able to give up my dreams of having children if that's what you ask of me, but until I can face my life without children, I will never be able to love them freely and openly as the gifts and blessings that they are. I don't know where I'm going, but I believe you'll be with me. Thy will be done, Lord. Thy will be done...in me.