Jesus, True God and True Man, is the radiance of God’s glory. He is our pattern for glorifying God. Jesus glorified the Father by doing his will. As the second Adam, Jesus freely chose to make the will of the Father the center of his life, even to his death by crucifixion. In contrast, the first Adam failed to give his Creator glory, by choosing to do his own will in satisfying his need to know good and evil like God. Though St. Paul was thinking of the pagans, we can apply his words to the first Adam who “exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25)

When we choose to do the will of God in different situations, we, like Jesus, give glory to the Father. We read in 1 Thessalonians: “It is God’s will that you grow in holiness.” When we seek to grow in holiness of life, we are saying “yes” to the Father’s will for us. For without holiness we cannot see or be with God in eternity. God wills us to be happy and fulfilled in him. St. Irenaeus captured this reality in these words: “The glory of God is man fully alive”. How more fully alive can we be than being one with God?  Are we seeking to be that alive now?