To be available

What to ask him in the encounter with the Father? How to respond to his love? A single word is enough to answer these questions, to define what we ask for and what attitude we must have availability, my availability. In fact, what did Jesus teach me to ask the Father? Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done.

Hallowed be your name. The Father will show his holiness, he will sanctify his name, when he takes away our heart of stone and gives us the heart of flesh (see Ez 36,23ff). But when I ask the Father to sanctify his name, I really want God to prove himself holy by changing me, I really want to renounce my way of seeing, my will, my comforts, I am truly open to God's plan even when it is identified with Cross?

Your kingdom come. The kingdom is God's plan, God's dream, it is what he has always had in mind for me. Your will be done. What is God's will? His kingdom. What is his kingdom? Change me, thus sanctifying his name.

With these three sentences I continue to say in three different ways: Father, I am here at your disposal, change me, do me as you want, because I really want to give you, offer you my life.
These are words that don't make sense if you just say them, they make sense to the extent that you try to live them. Jesus says to the Father your will be done (Mt 26.42) in the Garden of Gethsemane not only with words, but by actually accepting the plan that the Father has for him, accepting his passion and death on the Cross.

Too often, however, we prefer to limit ourselves to repeating words, our lips ask to change us but without truly having the heart, the spirit, the mind available to his plan, open to his action, without truly wanting to give up to ourselves, to our will.

p. Mario Nascimbeni
by Progetto (now NP) October 1992
NP May 2024