this important end, we humbly address this prayer to God. "Thy will be done."
The same should also be the fervent prayer of those, in whose souls God already reigns; who have been already illumined with the divine light, which enables them to obey the will of God. Although thus gifted and thus disposed, they have still to struggle against the solicitations of passion, the offspring of innate degeneracy and corruption; and were we of their number, we should still be exposed to great danger from our own frailty, and should always apprehend, lest, drawn aside and allured by our concupiscences, " which war in our members," we should again stray from the path of salvation. Of this danger our Lord admonishes us in these words: " Watch ye and pray that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is prompt but the flesh weak." [1] It is not in the power of man, not even of him who is justified by the grace of God, to reduce the irregular desires of the flesh to such a state of utter subjection, as that they may never afterwards rebel. By justifying grace, God, no doubt, heals the wounds of the soul; but it is not true that he also removes the infirmity of the flesh, as we may infer from the words of the Apostle: " I know that there dwelleth not in me, that is to say, in my flesh, that which is good." [2]
The moment the first man forfeited original justice, which enabled him to bridle the passions, reason was no longer able to restrain them within the bounds of duty, or to repress those inordinate desires, which are repugnant even to reason. Hence the Apostle says, that sin, that is the incentive to sin, dwells in the flesh; giving us to understand that it does not, like a stranger, make a temporary stay with us, but, as an inhabitant of " our earthly house of this habitation," [3] takes up its perpetual abode in our members. Continually beset, then, as we are, by domestic enemies, we see at once the necessity of taking refuge under the divine protection, and of praying that the will of God may be done in us.
In the next place, the pastor will explain to the faithful the force of this petition, and omitting many questions of scholastic disputation, which the erudition of some Doctors of the Church has discussed not less usefully than copiously, we shall content ourselves with saying, that, in the Lord's Prayer, the word "will" is that which is commonly called "the will of sign," (" voluntas signi,") and signifies what God commands or admonishes us to do or to avoid. Here, therefore, the word " will" comprehends all things which are proposed to us as the means of attaining heaven, whether they regard faith or morals; all things, in a word, which Christ our Lord has commanded or prohibited either in person or through his Church; and in the same sense are to be understood these words of the
