What Is God's Will?

“If God would just tell me what His will was, I would do it.”

Would you, though?

That question of itself could make an entire meditation.  However, look again at this phrase in another form:

“What does God want me to do?”

If I had the proverbial penny for every time this phrase had been asked or spoken, I would be rich indeed.  Even the number of times I have heard it in my own life would make a weighty pile (and that of course includes its origin in my own mind or mouth).

Take a third look at it:

“I don't understand why God won't just tell me what He wants me to do. I keep asking Him and asking Him.”

As with most aspects of our lives, there are two movements at work here.  The first is good: we turn toward God and ask Him what He wants, so there is a stirring of our hearts for God and a desire to be open to His will.

The second, however, often undermines the first.  Because we are so focused upon asking God what He wants of us, we fail to recognize what He is actually telling us through what is happening to us in each moment and what He is speaking through the silence in our hearts. Our failure originates from a misconception about what God's will means.  We think of it as something we do.  In becoming focused on God's will as something we do, we are looking for, in modern business parlance, “action items.”  Now that sort of perspective lies not too far off from the approach of Pelagianism which places salvation within the reach of our own actions instead of as our acceptance of unmerited grace given freely by our loving God.

Thus, like every other temptation it focuses us on ourselves instead of on God.  We become fixated on wanting to do the exact right thing and fearing that if we fail we will ruin God's plan for our lives.

Do you really think you have the power to ruin the plans of the OMNIPOTENT GOD?

I somehow doubt it.

Why then do we look outward?  Why do we seek the will of God in anything other than what He is giving us in the present moment?

In some sense it is because we are not happy in the moment.  We feel unable to bear whatever suffering happens to be our lot, either sickness of ourselves or loved ones, the loss of a job or work that makes us miserable, our plans falling apart, friends failing or betraying us, the death of someone we hold dear, a loved one following the wrong path....  The list could go on and on.

In all these things, we experience inner conflict because we know that things are not as they should be—as they were meant to be.  In short, because it is not yet heaven.

Consequently, we flee from these struggles, seeking solutions everywhere but in the depths of our hearts where God resides—where heaven begins to sprout like the mustard tree.  Saint Augustine put it so well in his much-quoted words: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”

The path of abandoning oneself to God's Providence offers the pathway to that rest.

Now often when people begin to think of abandoning themselves to God and accepting His will in every moment, they understand a sort of resignation or giving up on doing anything.  There enter cynicism.

Perhaps the best way to look at it is to understand our own will as a reflection of God's will since we were after all created in His image and likeness.  When we speak of His will, we can refer to His passive will and to His active will.  The latter means what He directly wills, as for example His creation of the world or the working of miracles.  The former encompasses all that He allows to happen without directly willing it, including any of the evils in the world, and which He permits in order to bring about a greater good, as He did with the Crucifixion.

In our own lives it is much the same.  We actively will certain things, seeking to do what is good and to grow in virtue.  That is easy enough to understand.

What about our passive will, however?

Certainly it is harder to understand—and harder to live—but ultimately it is where we become most united with God, for HE IS.  Remember He called Himself I-AM-WHO-AM, for He is being itself, existence itself.  Thus accepting what is means accepting His presence in each moment.

There is a piece of folk wisdom that says that one first has to admit to having a problem in order to begin to be able to change it.  Similarly, when we accept our current situation as it is things often do begin to change.  Even if the external situation remains the same, our hearts become transformed within us, our minds become converted.

Therefore, let us accept whatever is in our lives not in order to become bitter and resigned and stoic about it, but because we thereby choose to believe that our Beloved Father will bring about a greater good through it, that Christ is present with us through it, and that the Holy Spirit works our salvation through it.  Let us embrace everything that happens to us then in order to become one with the Holy Trinity at work in that moment.

A Prayer for the Weary

I want to share with you a beautiful prayer I ran across somewhere in my research for my latest theatrical project.  As I find myself awash now in the weariness following the intensity of preparing for said project, these words credited to the great Saint Augustine lift my heart a little.  May they lift yours also in your journey, especially if feel your steps dragging with reluctance as you go forward in the great battle of life.  Here is his prayer:

"God of our life, there are days when the burdens we carry chafe our shoulders and weigh us down; when the road seems dreary and endless, the skies gray and threatening; when our lives have no music in them, and our hearts are lonely, and our souls have lost their courage. Flood the path with light, run our eyes to where the skies are full of promise; tune our hearts to brave music; give us the sense of comradeship with heroes and saints of every age; and so quicken our spirits that we may be able to encourage the souls of all who journey with us on the road of life, to your honor and glory."

And may Saint Nicholas of Myra intercede for us upon his feastday today!

Our Hearts' Desire

How much do you desire God?

That was the question heading the most recent Restoration newspaper I read from Madonna House and it is a good question.  Ultimately it is the question that underlies all that we do throughout our lives, but particularly during Lent.

The whole purpose of Lent is to identify our desire for God.  We sacrifice goods in order to purify our desire within that we may recognize it as such.

Desire is like a flame; it starts small and it grows.

So Catherine Doherty wrote in the first article I read and I think the simile is so apt.  Desire truly is like a flame, which, as we feed it, grows and grows, while when we give it no fuel it dies away into embers, waiting perhaps for fresh kindling and a breath to bring it back to life.  The more we feed that desire the larger it grows until it becomes a bonfire and we are set on fire.  And then, as Saint Catherine of Siena said:

If you are who you should be, you will set the world on fire.

That conflagration may start from the smallest of flames.  It matters little whether you find in your heart only a coldness and emptiness or whether you feel that your desire for things of the world outweighs any desire for God.  If you feed the tiniest flicker with prayer and abandonment to God, you will become that burning light.

We exist to desire the Desired One: God.  As St. Augustine said, "Our hearts were made for Yourself, O Lord, and they are restless until they rest in You."

Catherine Doherty's words speak so powerfully to the reason for our existence.  One of the greatest struggles of our lives is to determine the answer to that question: why do we exist?  The Baltimore Catechism answers it simply: To love and serve God in this life and be happy with Him in the next.  In that simplicity there is great truth and it is our desire for God that prompts us to love and serve Him.

In order for that desire to grow, however, and in order for that flame to burn, there must be room for it.  As Catherine Doherty puts it:

His every act, His every word, must be enclosed in our desire, for if we are to fulfill our desire to see Him when the door of death opens (and even before, for the Kingdom of God begins now), we have to imitate Him whom we are going to look at.

This will require that we empty ourselves of many things, since the kind of fiery desire we have takes a lot of space.  It is not just a little kindling that we are going to ignite but huge dry wood.

We must desire to empty every corner of ourselves of everything but this person called Jesus Christ, God and man, who died and resurrected so that we might see the face of the Triune God....

Are You Hungry?

There is this popular motto going around these days regarding how to approach Lent: Don't give up chocolate for Lent.  Now that statement is meant to be provocative.  Hence I feel perfectly justified in responding with a similarly provocative statement: that is absolute hogwash.

Now of course if you give up chocolate (or any other little pleasure) for Lent and that is all you do, you may be missing the point.  If giving up that chocolate leads you to an awareness of God and of how you are seeking Him elsewhere, then it is certainly worthwhile.  However, if it merely causes you to substitute something else to fill that hole in your life, it has utterly failed.

Still, the reason I criticize the above statement is primarily because it could lead to a justification for continuing to overindulge simply because you are doing something else for Lent.  Asceticism is a necessary part of Lent, whether that means fasting on bread and water or giving up something like chocolate.

If it makes us hungry, that is a good thing.  For it is hunger that leads us to God.

Here is a young Franciscan, Brother Casey, meditating on the practical fruit of our hunger with an example from the Scriptures (his longer blog post on the same subject is here):

Our society has turned its back on asceticism in favor of a pleasure-driven search that results in momentary happiness, but no spiritual fruit.  Take that influence along with our fallen human nature and we enter a repetitive search for God in all the wrong places, trying to fill our persistent hunger with what will never satisfy.

Yet in the end, as Saint Augustine said: Our hearts are restless, until they rest in Thee.