While I said my Rosary today, my Father clarified the seeming harshness of Luke 9: 57-62. He brought to my mind Abraham’s sacrifice of his will, not his son. Had the men followed Our Lord’s invitation to “come with Me,” they may well have found themselves following Him right back to their homes and what they had to do there, and He might have helped them do it! Ours is a God of compassion not harshness.

With this settled, I took Ephesians 3:14-21 as the first text at my prayer period. “To attain to the fullness of God himself,” struck me as the reward, or actually the goal, of Christian living. To align our will to God’s will is to become more God-like. To attain to the fullness of God is to have our wills completely in accord with His, not just from a sense of sacrifice, but because we know God’s will is all-good. Thus, we become holy.

We moved on to John 3:22-30. “He must increase, while I must decrease,” referred to more than Jesus’ and John’s roles as teachers. It refers to our wills. Ours must decrease, while His must increase in us if we are to be holy. It’s an emptying of self, to be filled by Him.