How to handle our own will

No doubt, our own will is the most important faculty we have. Who we are, what and how we are, are largely determined by our will. It’s our will that gives meaning and direction to our life.

 While God gives us our objective identity and governs us with his divine providence, we cannot deny the fact that we are also who we want to be, what and how we choose ourselves to be. 

 Our human will is the seat of our freedom that enables us to go wherever we want to go, and even to be what we want to be. Where our will turns is where we are going to be. It’s the rudder of our boat of life.

 We may be pressured and influenced by external factors—culture, environment, weather, fashion, etc.—but with our will, we have a capacity to be beyond all these pressures, and above all these conditionings.

 It is in our will that we declare ourselves to be our own man. No one and nothing can enter it, if we don’t allow it to enter. It’s in our will that we can be in our most private moment, and isolated from everything and everybody else.

 But, alas, this is where the crucial question that involves all of us emerges. This is where the most fundamental reality of our life comes to light. 

 No one can deny that even if we have the capacity to be on our own, quite private, independent and isolated, we also know that our will did not self-generate, nor could it function in a vacuum, in an absolute independence of others.

 Our will is something given and received, and it is always in need of some elements of reference for it to function. It is the acknowledgement of this truth that we start to touch base with reality. Otherwise, we would start to invent a fantasy, confining ourselves in some prison of subjectivism.

 We need to find the ultimate source and end of our will, and from there learn how to use it within its proper framework and law. That’s why, our will by nature is always looking for a God—the objective God or our own version of God.

 How important therefore it is to take extreme care of how we handle our will. We just cannot use it at random, as in exercising at a wisp of a whim or a passing fancy. Our will needs to be properly grounded and oriented.

 We just cannot allow it to be dominated or even largely influenced by physical or biological factors, or by feelings and passions and things of the flesh, or by merely social, economic, cultural or political elements.

 It has to enter into some dialogue with God, no matter how mysterious that dialogue is going to be. The very least thing that we can do is to acknowledge that there is God and that we need to be with him. 

 We may not know much about him yet, nor feel anything special about him yet, but we can always put ourselves in his presence. From there, we can progress in our effort to know and love him more intimately.

 Thus, we can start by simply following the commandments that are the first and general articulation of God’s will to us. We can start offering things to him, things that are done according to these defined commandments.

 From there, we can start to figure out the finer points of his will by constantly asking him what he really wants us to know and do at any given moment. This means we have to be in a constant mode of prayer, which we can do in different ways depending on the circumstances we are in.

 The problem we have today is that many of us do things with hardly any reference to God’s will. That’s why we cannot persevere in doing good, in going all the way in the pursuit of justice, charity, etc. We can start well, but we get stuck somewhere.

 We need to listen to what our Lord told those who prided themselves in doing good but could not believe in him: “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” (Lk 11,23)

 Regardless of the many “good” things we appear to be doing in our work or study, if we are not with God, we simply “scatter.”

Let’s always imitate our Lady who said: “Be it done to me according to your word!”