Article Title: HOMILY OF 4TH SUNDAY OF ADVENT,YR B.
Author: Fr Ben AGBO
Date Added: 2008-12-22
Theme: THE PRAYER OF 'FIAT VOLUNTAS TUA'
In today’s 1st reading,1 Sam 7:1-16,David planned for God and through prayer wanted this plan realized. God heard his prayer but did not approve his plan because He had a better plan! He told him: ‘I will give you a fame as great as the fame of the greatest on earth…The Lord will make you a house and your sovereignty will always stand secure before me and your throne be established for ever…I will give you rest from your enemies’. We should learn from this that God often hears our prayer in a different way and with a different and better plan from the one well articulated in our prayer points. His word says that ‘for those who love God ,everything works unto their own good’cf Rom 8:28.God says ‘I have plans for you, plans for good not plans for evil’ Just look at how he set David’s future and gave him a dynasty that will last for ever and made him perpetually rest from his enemies.
As we look at the example of David in the old testament, we also look at the example of Mary in the new. She was the most highly favoured one in the new dispensation. The archangel told her: ‘Rejoice so highly favoured the Lord is with you…you will conceive and bear a son- Jesus .The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David; he will rule over the house of Jacob for ever’. We should understand that the Lord gives us favour that will last for ever. We don’t need to argue with God. After we have prayed for anything, we should allow him to decide how and when the favours will come. Psalm 37 says: ‘Do not fret at the prosperity of the wicked…for like grass one day it withers’ Good people often are made to smile last after tears but the opposite happens to the bad.
Our prayers should therefore be like that of our Blessed Mother ‘I am the handmaid of the Lord, let what you have said be done to me’. The centre of prayer is the ‘fiat voluntas tua’,learning to say ‘Thy will be done’ not ‘My will be done’. The centre of worship is fear of God and submission to the will/sovereignty of God not fear of the devil as we notice today in our modern-day Christians. There is so much ‘deliverance and breaking of yokes’ in our churches that if care is not taken, the devil becomes the real ‘man in-charge’ that must always be recognized. The gift that God gives his people is the gift he gave to David-the gift of ‘rest all round’. It is a gift beyond affluence and influence. It is given to those who have full trust and hope in God. Jesus said; ‘Take my yoke and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly in heart and you shall find rest for your soul’. When God grants rest for our souls He has answered our prayer and this is a sure promise,cf phil 4:7.
Why does Mary enjoy the greatest favour in the order of grace? St Paul gives us the answer in today’s 2nd reading saying that when the mystery of Jesus Christ. hidden for many ages was finally revealed, God expected human beings to simply believe and obey. Mary was the first to meet this target! We must learn from Mary in this season to say ‘fiat voluntas tua’
