Align Our Will To The Will Of God
- Deacon Dan DeLuca
- Sep 29, 2022
- 7 min read
Today the Church celebrates the Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, Archangels. These are the only three angels mentioned by name in Sacred Scripture. Saint Michael is acknowledged as a warrior saint who battles evil. Saint Gabriel is an angel who serves as a messenger for God. Saint Raphael is one of the seven Archangels who stand before the throne of the Lord. To recognize the feast the Church gives us a reading from the Gospel of John. This reading should draw to our mind the roll of the angels in salvation history. Their will is perfectly aligned to the will of God. It also provides us with an opportunity to consider what we need to do, to more perfectly align our will to the will of God. Let us dive into today’s Gospel.
Jesus Calls Philip and Nathanael
Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Jesus answered him, “Because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You shall see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.” John 1 : 47-51
Scriptural Analysis
Jesus see Nathanael coming and makes a pronouncement about him, “an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile.” This pronouncement is a reflection of the Psalms, “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.“ (32:2) Nathanael questions how Jesus could know him since they just met. Jesus’s response, “when you were under the fig tree” is a reference to the Old Testament prophets:
But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken. Micah 4:4
In that day, says the Lord of hosts, every one of you will invite his neighbor under his vine and under his fig tree. Zechariah 3:10
Nathanael would have immediately recognized this scriptural references and understood Jesus’s words to be a prophetic announcement. Nathanial also would have understood this to mean he had a place in the Messianic age. In response to this pronouncement of Jesus, Nathanael responds with a profession of faith, “You are the Son of God.” Jesus responds asking Nathanael if he believe only because he witnessed a miracle: his prophetic knowledge in this case. This response of Jesus is very different then the response Peter receives when he makes his profession of faith. That is because Nathanael’s is not a profession of Jesus as God. Nathaniel says Jesus is the Son of God, the King of Israel. Nathanael is still understanding Jesus in terms of an earthly Messiah and does not yet understand the true mission of the Messiah.
Additionally, there is a common pattern we see in Jesus’s response. His “do you believe” question is his way of expressing his skepticism of one’s believe based solely upon witnessing a miracle. Miracles were never ends in themselves. The witness of the miracles needs to look beyond the miracle to see the deeper truth God is revealing. To drive home this point, Jesus tells Nathanael that he will see greater things than these.
Jesus expands upon what these things are, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see“ The phrase “truly, truly” is often translated “amen, amen.” This double expression appears 26 times in the Gospel of John. It is used to signal that what comes next is of the highest importance and to pay attention. Jesus begins by addressing Nathanael but then with the second “you” he actually broadens the audience. John uses the Greek word opsesthe which is a plural form of you too indicate that what comes next is being addressed to all the disciples.
This interchange is also the last step in the successive revelation of Jesus that John presents in this chapter. He will then open up this revelation in the rest of the Gospel. Jesus has received a list of successive titles in this first chapter, “Lamb of God”, “Son of God”, “Rabbi”, “Messiah” “the one about whom Moses wrote”, “King of Israel.” The last title we get here, “Son of Man”, is important as this is the title that Jesus’s uses to refer to himself. The mention of the angels refers to the appearance of God, to Jacob, at Bethel.:
And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your descendants; and your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and by you and your descendants shall all the families of the earth bless themselves. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done that of which I have spoken to you.” Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it.” And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” So Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone which he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. He called the name of that place Bethel; but the name of the city was Luz at the first. Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God, and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house; and of all that thou givest me I will give the tenth to thee.” Genesis 28 : 12-22
Jesus combines two themes from Jacob’s story into the title Son Of Man. The first is revelation. In a dream God came to Jacob. Now God comes to man in the flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. The second them is God’s dwelling place. For Jacob it was a stone that became a pillar. However, Jesus Christ is the direct physical dwelling of God among us. Jesus also mentions the angels ascending and descending but not on a ladder but on the Son of Man. This alludes to the many instances where the angels will play a roll in Jesus’s mission.
Daily Application
Feast days like these are challenging for us. We can understand the work of St. Teresa of Calcutta or St. Katharine Drexel and relate to their lives far more easily than we can the Archangels. We can’t comprehend what their existence is like nor can we easily relate to those in the scriptures who were visited by the angels. Yet the Church gives us the feast day so there is most certainly something for us to take from this celebration. What the angels exhibit for us is a will that is perfectly aligned with the will of God.
While we are a different being than the angels, we are called to align our will completely to the will of God, just like they do. This is a hard reality for us to grasp and even harder for us to live out. We are faced with numerous decisions, numerous times throughout the course of the day to exercise our free will. That exercise can either be aligned with the will of God or not. Our desire should be to get to a point where 100% of those exercises of our free will are aligned with God.
How do we do that? It starts with prayer. We have to develop a rich and robust prayer life so that we are in communion, in relation with God. As we do this, we will begin to figure out ways to pray more often throughout our day: to invite the Lord into every decision we make. Frequent receptions of the sacraments is also essential. We are obligated to attend Mass weekly but we should strive to attend more frequently: daily if possible. Additionally, taking advantage of the Sacrament of Reconciliation is key. Unrepentant Mortal Sin cuts us off from the life of grace, and grace is essential for us to align our will to the will of God.
It is a daily struggle to grow in the alignment of our will to the will of God. On this feast of the Archangels, let us ask for Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael for their intercession: that God may poor out his grace upon us so that we can align our will to his perfect will.
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