There are many times in all of our lives, where we learn that we need to submit our will, to the will of others.  We don’t always get to do whatever we want to do.  Not if we’re going to get along with others.  This is the way that it has to be if we’re going to function and work together as a society.  We learn this first in our families.  I may want to chew my food with my mouth open.  I may want to throw peas at my younger brother.  I may want to eat breakfast in my underwear.  But try doing any of these things at the table with your family, and you know your parents wouldn’t put up with it.  We learn the rules.  And we learn that if we’re all going to get along, we’ve got to follow the rules and do what we are asked.  Then you go to school.  And there are more rules and expectations.  I remember that when I was in sixth grade, my sixth grade teacher made the entire class memorize every bone in the body in the first semester.  And in the second semester, we memorized every country and every country’s capital.  I hated it.  And I wasn’t too fond of my sixth grade teacher either.  It took hours of memorization.  But ask today about a fibula or about Oslo, Norway, and I’m on it.  Then you get a job and you go to work.  And there’s more submission of your will to the will of others.  You may want to sleep in until nine o’clock.  You may want to go to every one of your child’s programs at school.  And you may want to get paid for doing nothing.  And yet, what you want is not going to matter so much when you’re working for someone else.  Once again, we learn to submit our will.  The truth is that very few parts of our life are actually our own.  We are all accountable to many people.  Sometimes, growing up is learning to acknowledge this.

         Today, on this Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, we see Jesus Himself, submitting to the will of His Father, and to John the Baptist.  And Jesus was God.  You know, we dream about being God.  Some people like to pretend that they ARE little gods.  Some people play “god” all the time.  They want to do whatever they want and they want to be accountable to no one.  This is NOT new.  It’s the same dream that the Archangel Lucifer had before he lost his place in Heaven.  It didn’t work out too well for him.  Come to think of it, it doesn’t work out too well for people who try and do it today.  But today in our Gospel for this Feast Day, Jesus submits His will to what He knows He must do.  It’s not the first time that Jesus had to do this.  And we certainly know it’s not the last time either.  For isn’t the submission of the Lord at His Baptism really just preview for His submission in the Garden of Gethsemane?  Jesus Christ was dying to Himself long before they nailed Him to that cross.  In Jesus, God put aside His glory, His power, and God submitted to what needed to be done, to safe mankind.  From the moment that God came down from Heaven and took on the flesh, to that last breath of a dying messiah on a cross, Jesus submitted to what had to be done.  Jesus, the one who didn’t need to be baptized, was baptized, to show us that we needed to do it.  It was humiliating for God.  It was an act that went against His nature, His desires, and His very essence.  It was a submission.  And He did it for us.

         Like Jesus, many times every day, we too are asked to submit to God’s will.  We are to live God’s way and not our own.  And we make all kinds of excuses why we can’t.  We want to do things our own way.  We want to pick and choose.  We want to be “free” we say.  And yet, how’s that “freedom” working out for us?  Everybody doing whatever they want to do, no concern for God, and no concern for each other, the world is a mess.  Wouldn’t you think that the mess that we’ve made of things would inspire us to at least want to try things God’s way?  Our pride is killing us and our society.  Like our God, like Jesus, we too need to humbly submit to the Will of the Father, and that is the total will of the Father.  We like to give God part of our submission.  You know, God, I will do this, and this, and this.  But God, I’m sorry, I don’t you trust you enough to do that, and that other thing, and that BIG thing.  No God, I’ll do those things my way!  And how’s that work out?  It never works.  Sometimes we are better at submitting to our Boss, or our spouse, or our friends, then what we are at submitting to the Will of God.

        As Baptized Christians, we’ve got to get better at this.  We need to pray to know God’s will.  And then we need the humility, and the Faith, and the love to actually do God’s will.  God knows the BIG picture.  We don’t.  Shouldn’t we trust Him enough to do things His way, rather than our own?  

May God bless us as close our Christmas season,  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…AMEN !!!

St. Maria Goretti…Pray for us !!!