Knowing the Will of God
Advent 3, 15 December, 2002
Fr Neville Connell
Assistant Priest, St Peter's, Eastern Hill
All sorts of stories gather around the founders of Religious Communities – some of them are even true! Fr Herbert Hamilton Kelly, founder of the Society of the Sacred Mission, talked much about doing the Will of God. Eventually, during one lecture, a student asked, "But, Father, how do we know what the Will of God is?". To which Fr Kelly replied, "But that's the giddy joke; you don't!", leaving the student perplexed, and perhaps a little fearful.
Yet Fr Kelly was right. We don't know the Will of God, in the way that we know that St Peter's Church is on the corner of Gisborne and Albert Streets in East Melbourne. It is not unlike saying that we can't see where God is, but that we can sense where he has been.
But even if for much of our Christian lives we flounder along, sometimes closer, often not so close, even far away from God – or worse still, God seems far away from us – we are not left alone.
It takes time, the passing years of an imperfect faith, for us to realise that God has been with us, in all the ups and downs of life. That he has indeed been prompting us with those sudden intuitions which suggest one action rather than another; or with the strength and joy we need at different times.
But rarely do we know the Will of God, because he usually acts indirectly, and through his Holy Spirit. In our First Reading today we have, "The Spirit of the Lord has been given to me, for the Lord has anointed me. He has sent me to bring good news to the poor, to bind up hearts that are broken; to proclaim liberty to captives, freedom to those in prison; to proclaim a year of favour from the Lord." Here is the divine prompting, nudging which we all experience from time to time. The indirect nature, or the way in which the Lord uses intermediaries, is illustrated by a later section of this Reading, "For as the earth makes fresh things grow, as a garden makes seeds spring up, so will the Lord make both integrity and praise spring up in the sight of the nations." (Isaiah 62:1-2,10-11).
We do not know the will of God, rather we discover it become aware of it, as the Holy Spirit's presence in us, given at Holy Baptism, draws us along the path of faith. And not just we human beings, but the whole of creation – as we find in Genesis 1, where the Spirit of God "hovered over the surface of water", drawing the Creation into Being. In a real sense God worked through the creative power of the Holy Spirit and the Word, giving us a tantalising hint of what became the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity.
John the Baptist was one such intermediary. "A man came from God. His name was John. He came as a witness, as a witness to speak for the light, so that everyone might believe through him. He was not the light, only a witness to speak for the light." St John was such a fascinating figure in the Gospel – for he is part of it. The last of the Old Testament prophets, recalling the people of Israel to their God, to be a Holy People; yet preparing the way for the coming of the One whose sandal-strap he was not fit to untie.
St John Baptist was a voice crying in the wilderness as most prophets have done. A voice, the spoken word, pointing to the Incarnate Word. Preparing the way for the one we might call the true intermediary, Jesus Christ, who came to reveal the Father's nature to us a God, and as man to reveal to us our own human nature as it is called to be.
As we know, Jesus himself was lead by the Spirit after his baptism to be tempted – perhaps better put, to wrestle with his Father's call, his prompting, his nudging. The Spirit is God's agent to reveal his nature and purpose to us. At the Transfiguration of Our Lord, the disciples were given a glimpse, a foretaste of Heaven, our true home. But the way to this glorious vision is through the Cross – through the transfiguration of suffering, as Archbishop Michael Ramsay has put it.
The Prophet Isaiah received a divine call and a divine mission. So did St John the Baptist, and so did Jesus. And so have we received a divine call and a divine mission, when we were baptised – to make our own the words of Isaiah, "He has sent me to bring good news to the poor, to bind up hearts that are broken; to proclaim liberty to captives, freedom to those in prison; to proclaim a year of favour from the Lord".
To proclaim the message of hope – hope which is present even when everything goes wrong! The Spirit's nudging, prompting are most significant, crucial, when everything goes wrong.
In our Second Reading (1 Thess 5:16-24),St Paul writes, "Be happy at all times; pray constantly; and for all things gives thanks to God, because this is what God expects you to do in Christ Jesus. Never try to suppress the Spirit or treat the gift of prophecy with contempt; think before you do anything-hold on to what is good and avoid every form of evil."
This seems childlishly optimistic, particularly in our present uncertainties and fears. But that is another giddy joke: we know the will of God in the hard moments; there we find joy, hope, prayer. thanks in the transfiguration of suffering. These are the moments when we have our glimpses of heaven.
We are called to be intermediaries, to reveal the creative, renewing, healing, enlivening, transfiguring power of God's Holy Spirit in our ordinary, everyday lives.
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Views is a
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St Peter's Eastern Hill, Melbourne Australia.
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