This week we Lectio the Liturgy with the Collect for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Almighty ever-living God, direct our actions according to your good pleasure, that in the name of your beloved Son we may abound in good works. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
Our petition of the prayer is that God would direct our actions to His good pleasure. The Latin form of the prayer phrases it a bit more clearly. We find the words beneplacito tuo which is more literally translated as what pleases you well.
When we think about what pleases God, the easy answers would be that we behave well or we’re good people. I’ve heard people admit that God wants them to be happy, so it’s okay to do whatever they want to make themselves happy and that makes God happy. But as I prayed into this prayer, I realized that those are pretty superficial answers because at the heart of our actions directed to His pleasure, is meaning of our existence, what it means to be human.
The reason for our existence is found in the Baltimore Catechism question 6:
Q. Why did God make you?
A. God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him for ever in heaven.
To know Him, which leads us to loving Him and also gives us the desire to serve Him, is not only the heart of what it is to be human, it is the fulfillment of what it means to be human. Jesus was the first to fulfill human nature as the Father created it to be.
Jesus is the example of how to offer actions to the Father’s pleasure. His good works were gifts of sacrificial love and self-gift. Ours should be the same.
Asking in the name of your beloved Son, doesn’t mean we just end a prayer with “In Jesus’ name, Amen.” It means that we ask from our position as a child of the Father. To know, love, and serve Him means that we are in relationship with Him.
To know, love, and serve fulfills the desire for God that is “written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to Himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for…” (Catechism, #27)
The Collect this week is our response to God’s call for us to be in deeper intimacy with Him. We know Him, we love Him for his faithfulness and goodness for us. And now, we respond His call to be His presence in the world.
Our good works make His power known. Untold are the miracles He wants to do through you.