241. Ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time (A)
Meditations no. 235 (unofficial computer-aided translation)
Identifying ourselves unconditionally with Godâs Will.
Jesus warns us: Not everyone who says to me, âLord, Lord,â shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
Christian life is a constant effort to fulfil Godâs Will; not merely as we obey a law imposed on us from outside, but as good children, who try to please their father in everything. To reach this ideal of obedience we need to follow the path marked out by our Founder. Stages: Being resigned to the Will of God; Going along with the Will of God; Wanting the Will of God; Loving the Will of God.
This is a whole programme for sanctity. Being resigned to Godâs Will as a necessary evil would be unfitting for a child of God. Nor, once Godâs Will has been shown to us, can we settle for accepting it simply as something good, but difficult to fulfil. We must aspire to reach the summit: that is, falling in love with Godâs Will, seeking it, identifying ourselves with what God wants, which will always make for our good and our happiness.
Whoever loves Godâs holy and lovable Will is always happy, even when this Will may seem particularly hard. Our Father encourages us: Servite Domino in laetitia! I will serve God cheerfully. With a cheerfulness that is a consequence of my Faith, of my Hope and of my Love - and that will last for ever. For, as the Apostle assures us, Dominus prope est! - the Lord follows me closely. I shall walk with Him, therefore, quite confidently, for the Lord is my Father, and with his help I shall fulfil his most lovable Will, even if I find it hard.
If God tests us with difficulties, it is to make us more his own, and identify us more fully with his Will. After all, who loves us more than God our Lord does? The tenderness of a mother, the affection of the most loving of fathers, our own love for ourselves: none of these comes anywhere near the love God has for us. Whatever is best for each person and will make them happiest is what God wants for them; that is his Will. In very truth, in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. Unconditional identification with whatever God wants of us is the source of all true joy. As a result, nobody is happy on earth until he decides not to be. This is the way the path goes: suffering - in Christian terms - the Cross; Godâs Will, Love; happiness here and, afterwards, eternally.
Abandonment to Godâs Will requires us to overcome all inner resistance and eliminate any gaps in our love.
Abandonment to the Will of God is the secret of happiness on earth. Say, then: Meus cibus est ut faciam voluntatem eius, My food is to do his Will. When we live in total identification with Godâs most holy Will, what security it gives us! And what uncertainty, when that identification isnât there! Your own will, your own judgement: thatâs what unsettles you. How grateful we should be to God, for making such demands on us in order to turn us each into alter Christus, another Christ!
We are stones, blocks of stone, that can move and feel, that have a totally free will. God himself is the stonecutter, who removes our rough edges, shaping us, modifying us as He desires, with blows of the hammer and chisel.
Donât let us try to draw aside, donât let us want to sidestep his Will, for, in any case, we wonât be able to avoid the blows. - We will suffer all the more and uselessly, and, instead of polished stone ready for the work of building, we will be a shapeless heap of rubble that people will trample contemptuously under foot.
God has taken us into his loving hands and is pledged to make us each into a masterpiece, a true, firm foundation stone for the Church and the Work. If God loves us so much, why is there still such resistance on our part?
Let us try, therefore, never to lose our supernatural outlook. Let us see the hand of God in everything that happens to us: both in pleasant and unpleasant times, in times of consolation and in times of sorrow, as in the death of someone we love. Our first instinct should always be to talk to our Father God, whom we should seek in the depths of our soul And we cannot consider it trivial or unimportant On the contrary, it is a clear sign of a deep interior life, of a true dialogue of love. Far from being psychologically deforming, constant prayer should be, to a Christian, as natural as oneâs heartbeat.
Acquiring this identification through obedience.
How can we be more identified with Godâs Will? By receiving what God permits, and what he expressly asks of us through our Directors, with love.
By obedience we sacrifice our own will; therefore it is most pleasing to God, says St Gregory. Docility identifies us with God, because it replaces our will with his. In this way we fulfil St Paulâs wish: your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
Our Father advises us to think how pleasing to God is the incense which is burnt in his honour. Think how little the things of this earth are worth, for they are over before they have fairly begun. Think how we men are nothing: pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris (you are dust, and unto dust you shall return). We shall revert to the dust of the earth. But what is amazing is that in spite of all this we are not living for the earth, nor for our own honour, but for Godâs honour and Godâs glory, for Godâs service. That is what motivates us!
Your pride might one day whisper in your ear: âYouâre going unnoticed here, you who have got such remarkable talents⌠You wonât bear all the fruit you could⌠Youâll be blighted, and wear yourself out for nothingâŚâ But you came on board the boat of the Work because you chose to, because God called you unmistakably; no one can come to me unless he is brought by my Father who sent me. So then you must correspond to his grace by burning yourself up, and making our joyful sacrifice, our self-giving, into a burnt-offering, a holocaust!
Sicut lutum in manu figuli, like clay in the potterâs hand, faithful and docile, is how we have to be. We have to have our mind and heart laid open completely in spiritual direction, which while fully respecting our personality, helps us to supernaturalize it. Obedience sets us free from everything in ourselves that does not accord with the spirit of the Work, and makes us into men and women of God, firm and secure. Christ himself says so: Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock; and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. Who was ever so much in love, so totally identified with Godâs Will, as our Mother Mary? Let us place the fruit of todayâs prayer in her hands.