Fíat Volúntas Túa

[“And Mary said, . . . ‘may it be done to me according to Your word’” (Lk 1:38). “And (Jesus) said, ‘Abba, Father, . . . not what I desire, but what You (do)’” (Mk 14:36).]

O Lover,

My prayers opening and closing each day, be they verbal or centering, include the phrase fíat volúntas Túa often translated as “Your will be done.” The phrase, taken from the Latin Vulgate translation of the “Our Father” (Mt 6:10) in the Sermon on the Mount, resonates with the assents of Mary in the annunciation (Lk 1:26-38) and Jesus in Gethsemane (Mk 14:36; Mt 26:39-42; Lk 22:42). When slipping into the vernacular my own translation is “Do with me as You will.”

Of late, aware of how casually I sometimes raise this phrase to You, I have been pondering the deeper implications of fíat volúntas Túa. This prayer has innumerable precedents throughout the history of Christian spirituality, particularly at its mystical edge. The code-words of this interest include terms like detachment, surrender, submission, and releasement (gelássenheit). Guided by Eckhart’s “The soul does not grow by addition but by subtraction,” I might add the words relinquishment, disencumberment, and disentanglement. What this prayer is about is Your invitation for me to jettison impediments to Your whatever. 

So then, what have You been showing me, “You who have searched me and known me” (Ps 139:1)? Where does my oft-intoned fíat volúntas Túa most severely pinch my M.O.? What am I increasingly owning and where am I continuing self-delusion and/or avoidance? Where have I made limited progress and where have I but begun? The prayer being as much aspirational as descriptive, this post is a melding of what the Jesuits call the examen and all Christians refer to as confession. What follows are several issues which You via the fíat volúntas Túa prayer has been uncovering within me.

First, I tend to expect to be treated justly (by my lights!), especially by the intimates in my life. I have days and seasons when I am overly defensive and quick to descend into bean-counting and ledgering, my inner life a juridical monologue in which I am arguing my case. I cannot but conclude that at an instinctive level I remain laced with the egoic. O Lover, I ask for Your aid in my letting go of such bastioning tendencies.

Second, and relatedly, in my intoning and embodying of the fíat volúntas Túa prayer I require repeated reinforcement that the “self” to be relinquished is (a la Merton) fabricated, autonomous, “free,” and therefore false, this in contrast to the “self” proceeding toward unítas Déi, the one with, in and of You, and therefore true. While persuaded that any truthful self-knowledge presupposes openness to being moved from the false to the true self, I not infrequently lapse into the former. O Lover, assist me in surrendering my view of self to Your transformational Tsunami of Love in which I am part of the “new creation” in Your Christ (II Cor 5:17).

Third, regarding Christian mysticism’s rich and ongoing conversation between those holding fusion/merger (unítas indistinctiónis) as our ultimate destiny vis-à-vis You, and those advocating individual/personal identity (unítas distinctiónis), I continue to find myself moving toward a response of “whatever,” albeit not without tension. On the one hand, the highest expressions of love which I have experienced have seemingly had an implicit interpersonal (and thus dualistic?) dimension. Re-stated interrogatively: is not the venue of love, whether familial, friendship, marital, spiritual or divine, the “betweenness” of parties at some level separate and thus distinct even in union? On the other hand,I pray to be opened to the transcending of all finite limitations, individual identity not excepted, in the unfolding of that destiny. Restated interrogatively, how could the scale of Your “new heaven and new earth” (Apoc 21:1) possibly be circumscribed by the experiences of my wee little life, however transformational they have been? I suspect I need to allow the distinctiónis/indistinctiónis paradox to propel me beyond each and both yet farther into Your playground for which there are neither words nor images. With a nod to Rumi, do I hear You call to me to meet You out in that field? O Lover, continue to call me from out there.

Finally, in my limited contact with Hinduism, vedantic mystics in particular, I have encountered the pervasive theme off advaita (“non-seconded”) which some might call Oneing (contra-dualism). The impetus toward unítas Déi which I find in my own Christian mystical tradition (e.g., Eph 1:10) seemingly differs both in being the Télos of a historical flowage rather than an ontological state, and being in all respects centered in the Christic Incarnátus (e.g., Col 1:13-20). But the commonality between the two traditions on this point nonetheless astonishes me. I find myself on a continuum of letting go of various attitudes and theological constructs which were formerly part of a more exclusivist belief system. Otherwise stated, Your Christ has become indescribably larger than Christianity! Nudging me throughout this glacial shift over the decades has been a series of inter-spirituality explorers, whether in person (e.g., AnglicanMurray Rogers [1916-2006]) or via writings (e.g., Roman Catholic Benedictines Abhishiktananda [1910-73], John Main [1926-82], and Bede Griffiths [1906-93]), each in his own way facing and living east. O Lover, continue to free me from my tendency to stricture Your Sacred Heart, Engine of Your New Creation.

Fíat volúntas Túa: “Do with me as You will.”