Jesus came into the world to save mankind. He is the Messiah, the
Redeemer, the Savior. Just what does that mean? If His coming was to
re-do what Adam and Eve had undone, He came to lead mankind back into the
heart, back into obedience. Obedience to our God is the same as being
surrendered to Him, to His Will. The whole thrust of Jesus' Life was to be
surrendered to the will of His Father. "My food is to do the will of Him
Who send Me." John 4:34. In other words, this is what Jesus lived on. He
was always SURRENDERED to the Will of His Father.
This, then, is to be our life if we are to be followers of Jesus. This
hopefully we are. It means, then, that if we live in THOUGHT, we have a
journey to make, from thought to SURRENDER, to a life of obedience to the
Will of the Father. We, as Christians, are to unite ourselves to the
SURRENDERED state of Jesus, spending our time and energies to leave a life
of THOUGHT and gradually take on a life of SURRENDER so that in time and
with the help of grace, we can become true followers of Jesus when we
follow through on His command that we are to love God with our whole heart,
our whole soul, our whole mind and our whole strength. What is love other
than the gift of one'' self to the beloved. What am I being asked to do,
but to give of my self in total SURRENDER to Jesus, Who in turn, will bring
me in that state to the Father.
We are composed of body and soul. It means that there will be no
surrender of body until and unless there is first the surrender of the
spirit. We have been put on this earth to "know, love and SERVE God, and
so to be happy with Him forever in heaven." Serving is of the heart, but
knowing WHO to serve, is of the mind. Likewise, we cannot expect to serve
God until we are able to love Him; we are not able to love Him until we
know Him. The mind, therefore is to be a servant of the will, it is to
present to the will, the One Who it is to love and serve.
Total surrender to the Will of God is that which each one of us is to work
towards. It does not come right away; it has to be worked on. It comes by
way of a process. Nonetheless, in time, to those of good will, a life of
total and loving surrender to the Will of God is possible and should become
desirable. Impossible, no; difficult, yes. It is the ultimate challenge
of life, to bring the mind under the discipline of the will and to bring
the will under the Will of the Father. The more often we elicit individual
acts of obedience to God, the quicker will we be able to live by the "food"
that Jesus lived by.
The fact that the world is kept in thought, stimulated to keep the mind
active all the time, making it so that we keep ourselves in thought and not
allow ourselves to plunge into will, thus into obedience, is something that
we can blame Satan for. It is he who stands to gain most if we keep
ourselves in thought and shy away from surrender. Anytime, therefore, we
can make an act of obedience to God, as small an act as it may be, we
thwart the ploys of Satan, and put ourselves into the court of Jesus, of
Our Lady, and ultimately be of help to them both to put Satan under the
heel of Jesus, under the heel of Mary.