Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven

"The Kingdom of Heaven will belong to whoever has done the Willof the Father, not to those who have heaped words upon words and then rebelled against the Father's will, giving the lie to the words previously said. Here, too, you unite to all of Paradise, which does the Will of the Father. And if the inhabitants of the Kingdom do it, won't you do so to become, in turn, the inhabitants of Heaven? Oh, the joy that has been prepared for you by the Triune Love of God! How can you fail to work with a persevering will so as to conquer it?"

Wording:

• Latin: fiat voluntas tua sicut in caelo et in terra.
• English: thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

The petition of the Our Father - "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven"—aims at aligning human actions with the divine will. Indeed, the will of God is fundamentally Benevolent: "It is God who works in you to will and to act, according to his good purpose. Do everything without complaining or questioning".

The fulfillment of God’s Will

For Saint Augustine, this petition is a humble submission to the divine will, recognizing that God's will is always good and perfect. It is a prayer that humans accept and conform to God's will, just as angels and saints do in heaven.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, in his "Summa Theologica", develops three main dimensions of God's will: The will by which God governs all things in Creation according to a perfect order, oriented towards the ultimate Good (Will of ordination). The Will by which God permits certain acts that He does not usually permit. These acts generally escape human understanding (Benevolent Will). The will expressed by God through His commandments, laws, and revealed teachings. It constitutes an explicit indication of what man must accomplish to conform to the divine will (Signified Will). Thus, by praying the Our Father, the believers pray that they might obey God in their daily lives. This implies that God’s justice and mercy are realized in human affairs. By seeking thus to do God’s will, humans become collaborators with God, contributing to the establishment of His reign on earth.

For the Church, as expressed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the invocation "Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven" is an invitation to:

• Accept God's will with confidence, modeled after Christ.
• Actively cooperate in His plan of salvation.
• Work towards unity between heaven and earth, so that the divine will reigns in all things.

God has revealed the mystery of His will: to bring all things under one Head, Christ. This is why this prayer asks for the total fulfillment of this Benevolent plan on earth, as perfectly fulfilled in heaven (CCC § 2823).

Jesus is the model of perfect obedience to the Father’s will (CCC § 2824).

The goal of our union with the Father’s Will is that His perfection, as it is in Heaven, becomes reality on earth, in us and around us. This union is made possible by the Holy Spirit who gives us the strength to choose what pleases the Father (CCC § 2825).

Prayer is the path to discern and accomplish God’s will. It is not enough to say words to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but one must do the will of the Father. (CCC §§ 2826-2827)

In Maria Valtorta

In her inspired writings

In GRM 203.9, during the second Passover, Jesus gives the gift of the Our Father to the eleven Apostles, Judas having been absent. On this third petition, Jesus insists on the perfection of the Virtues reigning in Heaven and which must also be found on earth.

“And may Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven”. The submission of one’s will to the will of another person can be accomplished only when one reaches perfect love for that creature. The submission of one’s will to God’s can be achieved only when one achieves possession of the theological virtues in a heroic degree. In Heaven, where everything is faultless, God’s will is done. You, children of Heaven, must learn to do what is done in Heaven."

In GRM 364.7, during the third Passover, Jesus reaffirms the Benevolent Will of God: that all may be saved..

"May Your Will, Most Holy Father, be done by every heart in the world, that is, may every heart be saved, and let none be left without the fruit of the Sacrifice of the Great Victim, because that is Your Will: that man be saved and may enjoy You, Holy Father, after the forgiveness which is about to be granted."

In GRM 630.23, the risen Jesus confirms that through His Passion He obtained for us access to Grace which establishes the Kingdom of God in us and that thus we can unite ourselves to God's Will.

"So let the Kingdom of God be in you, men, through Grace; let it be on the Earth, through the Church, let it be in Heaven, for the blessed souls who, having lived with God in their hearts, united to the Body of which Christ is the Head, united to the Vine of which every Christian is a branch, deserve to rest in the Kingdom of Him for Whom all things have been made: Me, Who am speaking to you and Who have given Myself to the Will of the Father, so that everything might be accomplished. I can therefore teach you, without hypocrisy, that you must say: “Thy; Will be done on Earth as It is in Heaven”. How I have done the will of My Father can be told even by the clods of earth, by plants, by flowers, by the stones in Palestine, by My wounded Body and by a whole population. Do as I did. To the very end. Even unto death on a cross, if God so wishes. Because, remember, I have done it, and there is no disciple who deserves mercy more than I do. And yet I have consumed the greatest sorrow. And yet I have obeyed with perpetual renunciations. You know. You will understand even more in future when you resemble Me drinking a draught at My chalice… Let this thought be constantly present to you: “Through His obedience to the Father, He saved us”. And if you want to be saviours, do what I have done. There will be some who will be acquainted with the cross, some with the tortures of tyrants, some with the torture of love, some with the exile from Heaven, to which they will tend until a very late age before ascending there. Well, in everything let the will of God be done. Consider that the torment of death or the torment of life, while you would like to die to come where I am, are the same in the eyes of God, if they are suffered with cheerful obedience. They are His Will. So they are holy."

In his dictation of July 7, 1943, Jesus stresses the importance of this third petition of the Our Father as it leads to life "in" God.

"The Kingdom of Heaven will belong to whoever has done the Will of the Father, not to those who have heaped words upon words and then rebelled against the Father's will, giving the lie to the words previously said. Here, too, you unite to all of Paradise, which does the Will of the Father. And if the inhabitants of the Kingdom do it, won't you do so to become, in turn, the inhabitants of Heaven? Oh, the joy that has been prepared for you by the Triune Love of God! How can you fail to work with a persevering will so as to conquer it?

"Those doing the Will of the Father live in God. In living in God, they cannot err, cannot sin, and cannot lose their dwelling in Heaven, for the Father has you do nothing except what is Good and what, in being Good, saves from sinning and leads to Heaven. Those making the Father's Will their own, while annulling their will, know and savor-while on earth-the Peace which is the endowment of the blessed. Those doing the Will of the Father, while killing their perverse and perverted will, are no longer men: they are already spirits moved by love and living in love.

"You must, with good will, tear your will out of your heart and replace it with the Will of the Father.

"After having provided for the petitions regarding the spirit, since you are poor, living amidst the needs of the flesh, ask Him who supplies food to the birds of the air and clothing for the lilies of the field for bread."

In her spirituality

In her Autobiography, Maria Valtorta makes this remark:

"Closely observe, Father, ninety percent of Catholics. And I am speaking of practicing Catholics. They follow religion to the point of frequenting Sacraments, Masses, rosaries, the observance of fasting and abstinence (much less practiced), and then—that’s all. The prayer of prayers, transformed into action, is not to be found. People stop at “Thy Kingdom come,” and then resume with “Give us this day our daily bread” (thinking to themselves, “And also give us quite a bit to go with it,” which is left unsaid, but is felt more than is admitted), “forgive us our trespasses, and lead us not into temptation.” The Will of God is not named except in a mumble. You never know! If you make certain requests! And then, if some will painful to us should occur to the Father?"

Maria Valtorta had to confront God's Will in its difficulty, the "narrow gate": at the time she wrote these lines, she had experienced affective dryness, the death of her beloved father, jealousy and misunderstanding in her commitments. She was permanently bedridden and would soon become an orphan. Despite all this, she could say with a sincere Heart: "Thy Will be done," which is the Fiat of the Virgin Mary at the Annunciation. We now know all the treasures and Consolations she obtained thereafter, but she did not know them at the time when she wrote these lines and those that follow. She had only trust. A little further on, towards the end of her Autobiography, which takes on more of a testamentary aspect because she believed her death near, she expresses this act of trust in God’s Will in which she was united.

"I have realized for years that it is God who is acting in me. For years—that is, since I effaced my human self and let myself be formed anew by God, forgetting myself and having Him as my only aim. Even my very intense perceptions of what is stirring in another heart are not at all my own. I would be deafer than an adder to all the waves of sounds issuing from my sister souls. But a force far above my own makes me capable of intuiting the needs of creatures. At times I am left agape on discovering that in speaking this way, virtually at the suggestion of a third party, I place my finger squarely on the place that hurts. And I admit to myself, “It’s really God who acts through us when we have abandoned ourselves to Him completely.”

I likewise say to my little sister souls whose greatest fault is to measure God by a human standard that if we must confide boundlessly in Him, we must not, however, expect that He will be the one to do everything. That would be foolishness. It is we who must aid God’s work by applying all our good will, and tenacious good will, to respond to the inspirations and the action of God. If we offer resistance, if we want to act exclusively on our own, or do nothing at all, nothing good is achieved.

We must help God with our good will; God, in turn, helps us, and from this exchange of help there issues forth spiritual improvement. Wanting to act on our own would be pride, and pride destroys. Our work would thus leave no fruit, but a distressing void, if not a tree with poisoned fruit.

We must not lose heart if we take a tumble. Such loss of heart would likewise be pride. We are eternal children in the school of the spirit, and children often fall. But they do not hurt themselves too badly. Adults do, for their bones are hard and they are not supple. And, moreover, if, unfortunately, we have also hurt ourselves quite badly, it is an additional reason to take refuge in the bosom of God, who will heal all our aches. If we lock them in ourselves out of pride and foolish, useless shame, the end result is that we cause tetanus or gangrene to emerge from an initial graze.

I would like to say to all the little souls, “Trust in God, brothers and sisters, for He is the only one who feels loathing for no one. Man withdraws, criticizing and disdaining those at fault. God clasps them to his heart. Christians do not proceed in perfection because they still do not know who God is, what his gifts and tastes are. They judge God by their own standard: petty, narrow-minded, vengeful, intransigent, tenacious in his standoffishness. But God is love! God wants us at any cost; God died to save us, whose sins He saw before we ever existed."

Further reading

• Our Father
• Our Father who art in Heaven
• Hallowed be Thy Name
• Thy Kingdom come
• Give us this day our daily bread
• Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us
• Lead us not into temptation
• But deliver us from evil

Voluntary acceptance by man of the will of God. Ex: The fiat of Mary at the Annunciation and the mystery of the Incarnation. (From Latin fiat "let it be done")

Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992).

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