Sermon Blog
The Power of the Will
February 16, 2024
On the Thursday after Ash Wednesday, the Mass brings us these these forceful words of Jesus from the Gospel of Luke: “And he said to all, ‘If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.’” Reading only the second clause in this verse, we might think Jesus is looking for some elite Christian followers who will deny themselves. Surely he doesn’t expect all Christians to answer this call to heroism. But our Lord is clear: He said “to all” that “if any” man, and in doing so both offers Himself to every man and leaves no room for half-hearted disciples. St. John Henry Newman, in his sermon, “The Power of the Will,” shows us that the heroism needed to be a disciple of Christ is within the reach of every person.
Within Christianity, believers have varying degrees of friendship with Jesus, as many degrees of friendship that exist in our relationships with others. Our friendship with Jesus is likely shallow if we have only superficial or infrequent conversations with him; or if our faith is reduced to the minimal obligations the Church imposes – annual reconciliation, annual reception of the Eucharist, weekly Mass attendance, and so on; or if our morality consists of the avoidance of great evil. “Surely,” Newman says, “it is not enough to avoid evil in order to attain to heaven,—we must follow after good.”
On the contrary, we are close to Jesus if we open ourselves in prayer to him throughout our day, if we allow the grace of God to sustain us through the sacraments and if we love our neighbor with deeds. What is heroic about following Jesus in these ways? Nothing obvious to the senses. But interiorly we feel it. The death we must face when we say “yes” to Him is truly a death. It is a death to self: to doing what we want, when we want, how we want. What is actually being asked of us in loving God and our neighbor is often so small — picking up after ourselves at home, setting aside some time to help a coworker when we have our own work to do, getting up a little earlier to pray. But while the size of the task may be small, the degree of the task is great because it takes real courage and power to say no to ourselves.
What do we need to overcome ourselves, to say yes to Jesus and no to our own selfish desires? Newman says the answer is within: “Why do we not obey as we ought? Many people will answer that we have a fallen nature, which hinders us; that we cannot help it, though we ought to be very sorry for it; that this is the reason of our shortcomings. Not so: we can help it; we are not hindered; what we want is the will; and it is our own fault that we have it not. We have all things granted to us; God has abounded in His mercies to us; we have a depth of power and strength lodged in us; but we have not the heart, we have not the will, we have not the love to use it.”
We can live the heroic Christian life. It isn’t complicated. But do we have the will to follow Jesus? Do we want him more than we want the life we have cultivated for ourselves? Perhaps, as Newman says,“We fear to be too holy. Others put us to shame; all around us, others are doing what we will not. Others are entering deeper into the kingdom of heaven than we. Others are fighting against their enemies more truly and bravely. The unlettered, the ungifted, the young, the weak and simple, with sling and stones from the brook, are encountering Goliath, as having on divine armour. The Church is rising up around us day by day towards heaven, and we do nothing but object, or explain away, or criticise, or make excuses, or wonder.” A modern day saint, Josemaria Escriva, wrote: “Sanctity is made up of heroic acts. Therefore, in our work we are asked for the heroism of finishing properly the tasks committed to us, day after day, even though they are the same tasks. If we don’t, then we do not want to be saints!” We need to will, to desire, our sanctity.
This Lent we can resolve to use the power of our will to say yes to Christ. Of course, we will need the power of His grace to do so, but remember that He has given it to us. And we will surely stumble on many occasions, but remember that he has promised the strength to get right back up again. That leaves one thing for us: to desire.
