Discerning God's Will

Discerning God’s Will: Today’s Liturgy,  1 Samuel 1: 24-28, and the Gospel, Luke 1: 46-56, hail two great women whose motivating force was to give God their all!  Selfishness, self-aggrandizement, self-centeredness were transformed by grace into God-centered motivations. If we are determined to allow God to bring our wills into harmony with God’s will, we, too, need to give God our weaknesses. God alone is able to make us into women and men who long for God’s will to be accomplished in us.  God prepared Mary to become God’s Temple, totally one with God,  by her Immaculate Conception (the graces won on Calvary given to her at the moment her parents conceived her).  You and I have those graces through our Baptism, Reconciliation, Eucharist, the Anointing of the Sick and all other ways in which God cleanses us of our sinfulness. Through God’s mercy we are made capable of being one with the Lord in our choices.

Discerning the will of our God is also grace! Let us ask for that grace in the same way as Hannah in 1 Samuel  1: 24-28 and Mary in the Annunciation, Luke 1: 38,  said: “Behold the Handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to your Word” and truly mean it!