{"id":292116,"date":"2011-02-28T22:00:04","date_gmt":"2011-02-28T21:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/march-2011\/"},"modified":"2024-05-13T20:41:37","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T18:41:37","slug":"march-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/march-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"March 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word<\/strong>.<\/strong><\/span> Certainly, his will is not always clear to us. Like Mary we too will need to ask for light to understand what God wants. With great sincerity we must listen well to his voice within us and, if need be, ask advice from those who can help. But once we have understood his will, we want to say \u2018yes\u2019 to him straightaway. If, indeed, we have understood that his will is the greatest and most beautiful thing that could happen in our life, we will not resign ourselves to \u2018having to do\u2019 the will of God. Instead we will be glad to \u2018be able\u2019 to do the will of God, to be able to follow his plan, so that his idea for us might come about. It is the best and most intelligent thing we can do. Mary\u2019s words \u2018Here I am, the servant of the Lord\u2019, therefore, become our loving response to God\u2019s love. They keep us always turned towards him, in an attitude of listening and of obedience, wanting only to do his will, to be as he wants us to be. Sometimes, nonetheless, what he asks of us can seem absurd. It would seem better to us to do something different; we would like to decide for ourselves. We might almost want even to advise God and tell him what to do and not do. But if I believe that God is love and trust him, I know that what he sets up for my life and for the lives of those close to me is for my good and theirs too. So I put myself in his hands, I abandon myself to his will with full trust, and I want it with the whole of myself, to the point of being one with it, knowing that to welcome his will is to welcome him, embrace him and be nourished with him. We must believe that nothing happens by chance. No event, whether it be joyful, indifferent or painful, no encounter, no situation in the family, at work or at school, no physical or moral condition, is without meaning. On the contrary, every event, situation or person bears a message from God. Everything contributes to the fulfilment of God\u2019s design, which we will discover bit by bit, day by day, doing the will of God as Mary did. Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word<\/strong>.<\/strong><\/span> So how can we live this Word? Practically speaking our \u2018yes\u2019 to the word of God means doing well and completely all that he asks us to do in every present moment. We should devote ourselves wholeheartedly to whatever we are doing, putting aside everything else, letting go of any thoughts, desires, memories, actions that have to do with anything else. We can say in front of every will of God, whether it be painful, joyful or indifferent, \u2018Let it be with me according to your word\u2019, or, as Jesus taught us in the \u2018Our Father\u2019: \u2018Your will be done.\u2019 \u00a0Let\u2019s tell him this before each of our actions: \u2018May it be done\u2019, \u2018Your will be done.\u2019 We will compose, moment by moment, piece by piece, the marvellous, unique and unrepeatable mosaic of our lives that the Lord has always had in mind for each one of us. Chiara Lubich<\/em> (First published December 2002)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word (Lk 1:38).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,3599],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-292116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato","category-word-of-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}