"To Do Your Will, O My God, Is My Delight" (Psalm 40)

In today's responsorial psalm, Psalm 40,  we pray: "Here I am, Lord, I come to do your will....To do your will, O my God, is my delight..."  In the second reading, Hebrews 10: 4-10, St. Paul reminds us that Jesus became a human being "to do [God's] will"  because that is what God desired of Him, not ""[s]acrifice and offering" and that God takes "no delight in holocausts and sin offerings."  St. Paul restates Jesus' response, saying:  "Sacrifices and offerings,  holocausts and sin offerings, you neither desired nor delight in. These are offered according to the law....Behold, I come to do you will." In doing do, St. Paul explains, Jesus "takes away the first to establish the second. By this 'will,' we have been consecrated through the offering of the Body of Jesus Christ once for all."  In the Gospel, Luke 1: 26-38, Mary responds to the angel announcing the Incarnation, namely, that the Son of God will take on human nature in  her womb, by saying: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to  your will."

Each of those Scriptures state clearly our call to carry out God's will. He desires nothing less of us! How often, however, do I not choose my will above God's will. How often do I not forget that, like Mary, I am God's handmaid and that God does not desire sacrifices or offerings,  holocaust and sin offering from me. He wants me to surrender my will to Him, nothing short of that sacrifice!  And that challenge to surrender my will to His comes in ordinary, mundane ways:  right now, social distancing and limiting going out of my home in an effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus, cooperating with my spouse or with the leadership of my religious community, my government, my employer in responding to this call to do our part in efforts to stop the spread of this disease.  Surrendering to God's will may also  mean sacrificing my convenience to help another person in need, letting go of my way and accepting the way of another person, or changing the time that I do something in order to to assist another person to complete a different chore. 

"To do your will, O Lord, is my  delight" (Psalm 40) or is it really?