We Do What Pleases Him

There was a beautiful quote from today’s first reading from the first Letter of Saint John that I want to highlight tonight: “Beloved: We receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him” (1 John 3:22).

“Please.” Please is a magical word. My mom always told me it was the magic word. We want to please God; therefore, we keep His commandments, and that is why He answers our prayers. On the relational path of pleasing another, we start off wanting to please Our Heavenly Father, and we end up wanting to please our divine Spouse and Bridegroom, Jesus.

My wife is leaning over my shoulder as we eat salsa, hommus, and chips, and she said that God doesn’t always answer our prayers. That is true, for God does not answer every one of our prayers as we want. Let me come back to explain this after I explain something else first.

Yesterday I was talking about Saint Augustine’s book on virginity, and he was quoting and discussing what Saint Paul was saying about marriage and virginity. Paul said: “The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman or girl is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please her husband” (1 Corinthians 7:32-34). The married seek to please their spouse; the virgins seek to please their divine Spouse. This does not mean that married people do not try to please the Lord, but it means that virgins have the ability to have more of an “undivided attention” for God.

The word “please” is a word often used in reference to a spouse. We seek to please the one to whom we are married, and it is right and good to do so. Virgins dedicated to God live the life of heaven here on earth and take God as their sole and primary Spouse. They sacrifice the very great good of an earthly spouse to gain the even greater good of the divine Spouse.

All of us are called to please the Lord and to love Him with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Insofar as we love Him and give ourselves to Him, we grow closer to Him and draw closer to becoming His spouse. After drawing close to Him, we do keep His commandments and we do seek to please Him; our wills more and more become as one. Our will and mind ever more closely conform to His will and mind. Our heart loves Him, and we seek to please Him. It is in this state of conformity of our mind and will to God that in our prayer we ask for what pleases God, and He always gives it because it is what He wanted to give all along.

Jesus, in His humanity, struggled with this conformity of His will to the divine will in the Garden of Gethsemane as He prayed, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39). He did not want to undergo all the suffering that He knew was right around the corner, at least not in His humanity He didn’t. But above all else, Jesus was of one will with the Father, and so that conformity and obedience to the Father is what He wanted in His heart of hearts. He concludes His prayer to be spared the suffering with the prayer to be in union with the Father’s will. In the end, His prayer is only to do the Father’s will.

How do I pray with the very prayer of God? If we give ourselves trustingly into God’s hands, He will teach us and help us to pray: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:26-27). Eventually, if we do not give up and rely increasingly more and more on Him, His heart will become our heart, and His will will become our will.

When you and I love God with a full heart and mind, when our tree of life is strong and bearing good fruit every month, then our prayer will be the very prayer of God Himself, and we will receive whatever we ask of our Father and of our Husband: “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. 17 This I command you, to love one another” (John 15:16-17).

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
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