VATICAN CITY (CNS) — People today have so many options about how they will spend their time, their lives and their money that discovering and doing God’s will really is as difficult as most people claim, Pope Francis said.
“Every day we are presented with a tray full of options,” the pope said Jan. 27 during the homily at his early morning Mass in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae where he lives.
Focusing his homily on doing God’s will, the pope repeatedly admitted, “It’s not easy,” according to Vatican Radio.
[hotblock]
The readings for the day’s Mass — from Hebrews 10, Psalm 40 and Mark 3 — repeatedly spoke of the importance of seeking God’s will and responding.
“The opposite began in paradise with Adam’s failure to obey,” the pope said. “That disobedience brought evil to all humanity. Sins are acts of disobedience, of not doing God’s will.”
But Jesus, he said, taught humanity that obedience is the only path to happiness and salvation. “It’s not easy,” the pope said, but it was not easy for Mary to accept God’s will that she bear God’s son or for Jesus to accept dying on the cross or for some of the initial disciples to follow Jesus, so they ran away.
The only way to do God’s will is to pray for grace and strength, the pope said. “Do I pray that the Lord will give me the desire to do his will or do I look for compromises because I am afraid of God’s will?”
The only way to know God’s will “for me and my life, about a decision I must make now, about many things, how to handle things,” he said, is to pray.
But it is not enough to want to do God’s will and to discern his will in prayer, the pope said. One must also pray for the grace to do God’s will.
PREVIOUS: Confession is time to encounter God, it’s not a dry cleaners, pope says
NEXT: In this life and the next: Questions on purgatory and papal speechwriting
Keep reading the daily readings. I am surprised how many people in nursing homes Do NOT listen to EWTN. Their news is great. Missing all the trash ( who shot who & unhealthy talk).