Category: God’s WillHow can I know the will of God in my life? – Part II of II
A: After covering the basic ideas regarding God’s will in our previous post, we can now answer your question specifically. How Long Is Too Long? Your first question, then, can be answered like this: You can know the will of God in your life through the commandments and the responsibilities of your calling (God’s indicative will), and through the circumstances outside of your control that God permits (God’s permissive will). The physical suffering you are facing is clearly a circumstance that seems out of your control; it would most likely fit into the category of God’s permissive will. Your second question, though, is harder to answer. How long should you pray to be delivered from this suffering? A few reflections may help you have greater peace in this difficult dilemma. Pray Freely First, praying to be delivered from suffering is fine. It is one of the fruitful responses to suffering, because through that prayer we exercise our faith, hope, and love for God, along with the precious virtues of humility and perseverance. Jesus prayed for deliverance in Gethsemane. St Paul prayed to be delivered from the “thorn in his flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7). But, this prayer of petition should always be offered with a condition: “Lord, let me be healed of this affliction, if it be your will.” We have to trust that if his answer to our prayer is “no” or “not yet,” that answer flows from his infinite love and wisdom, even if we don’t particularly like it. Accepting God’s Current Answer Second, as long as God has not healed you, either through a miracle or through the natural, prudent steps that you have taken (medical attention, for example), we know that he is still permitting your suffering. In that sense, it is his permissive will for you to continue bearing this cross. So, for now, this is part of God’s will for you. I say “part” because God’s indicative will still applies. Even in the midst of our sufferings, we must strive to remember that by following the commandments and fulfilling the responsibilities of our state in life, we are glorifying God, building his Kingdom, and following Christ. We should try to avoid letting our crosses blind us to the integral picture of our Christian discipleship (which includes continued participation in the Sacraments, prayer, and loving others as God has loved us). Learning to Live with Mystery Third, on a very practical note, it is not always easy to know when to stop praying for a particular petition. In the Gospel, Jesus exhorts us to “pray continually and never lose heart” (Luke 18:1), and even tells us a couple of parables to illustrate the point (see Luke 18 and Luke 11). He also promises: “Ask and you shall receive” (Matthew 7:7). And yet, St. Paul had the experience of asking for the thorn in his flesh to be removed – repeatedly – and God did not give him what he asked for. There is a mystery here. St Augustine explains that God sometimes refrains from giving us the specific thing we ask for, because he wants to give us something better; he wants to respond to a deeper desire from which the specific petition flows. Learning From St Paul and A Practical Tip Perhaps in your case St. Paul’s example can be helpful. He kept asking for the thorn in his flesh to be removed, until he received this answer from God: “My grace is enough for you; my power is at its best in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). With that answer, he no longer felt a need to ask for healing. As long as you feel in your heart the desire to be healed of your affliction, continue to bring your petition to the Lord. But in order to avoid becoming obsessed with or confused by the painful situation and God’s mysterious response, perhaps it would be helpful to make your petition in the form of an established devotion. For example, you can make the Nine First Fridays devotion for this intention. Or you could do a novena to St. Pio Pietralcina or to Our Lady of Good Remedy during the first nine days of every month. By circumscribing your petition for healing within an established devotion of some kind, you can be at peace that you are doing your part (persevering and not losing heart), while not letting your struggle disturb or dominate all the other aspects of your Christian discipleship. You can be assured that I will join my prayers to yours, that God’s will be done, and that you find the peace that comes from God’s embrace even as you share in the pain of his Cross. A prayer of surrenderLoving Father, I surrender to you today with all my heart and soul. Please come into my heart in a deeper way. I say, “Yes” to you today. I open all the secret places of my heart to you and say, “Come on in.” Jesus, you are the Lord of my whole life. I believe in you and receive you as my Lord and Savior. I hold nothing back. Holy Spirit, bring me to a deeper conversion to the person of Jesus Christ. I surrender all to you: my time, my treasures, my talents, my health, my family, my resources, my work, relationships, time management, successes and failures. I release it and let it go. I surrender my understanding of how things ‘ought’ to be, my choices and my will. I surrender to you the promises I have kept and the promises I have failed to keep. I surrender my weaknesses and strengths to you. I surrender my emotions, my fears, my insecurities, my sexuality. I especially surrender ______ (Here mention other areas of surrender as the Holy Spirit reveals them to you.) Lord, I surrender my whole life to you, the past, the present, and the future. In sickness and in health, in life and in death, I belong to you. (Remain the Lord in a spirit of silence through your thoughts, a heart song, or simply staying in His presence and listening for His voice.) How can I know the will of God in my life? – Part I of II
A: Clearly, you have a passionate desire to know and embrace God’s will in your life. You should be so grateful for this desire! You are “hungering and thirsting for righteousness” (Matthew 5:6), and so, you are blessed! The spiritual life is, in its most basic elements, nothing less than a following of Christ, an imitation of him. And his very food – the thing that he hungered for and the thing that nourished and strengthened him – was “to do the will of the one who sent me” (John 4:34). The mere fact that you submitted this question is sure proof that the Holy Spirit is hard at work in your heart, and that you are making an effort to collaborate with him. On the other hand, the interior turbulence that the situation is causing you is most likely not from the Holy Spirit. I hope the following thoughts can help put you more at ease. Before trying to answer the specific question about your physical suffering, we have to make a theological distinction. The phrase “God’s will” can cause confusion if we don’t identify two broad sub-categories, so to speak: From our perspective, God’s will can be either indicative or permissive. God’s Indicative Will God can indicate that he wants us to do certain things – this is his indicative will. In this category we find the Ten Commandments, the commandments of the New Testament (e.g., “love one another as I have loved you” [John 15:12], “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations…” [Matthew 28:19]), the commandments and teachings of the Church (e.g. fasting on Good Friday), the responsibilities of our state in life, and specific inspirations of the Holy Spirit (e.g. when Blessed Mother of Teresa was inspired to start a new religious order to serve the poorest of the poor). The field of God’s indicative will is humongous. In touches all the normal activities and relationships of every day, which are woven into the tapestry of moral integrity and faithfulness to our life’s calling, plus the endless possibilities of the works of mercy (thus obeying the commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself” [Mark 12:31]). Yet it not only consists in what we do, but also in how we do it, which opens up the whole arena of growth in Christian virtue. We can wash the dishes (responsibilities of our state in life) with resentment and self-pity, or with love, care, and supernatural joy. We can attend Sunday Mass (Third Commandment and commandment of the Church) apathetically and reluctantly, or with conviction, faith, and attention. We can drive to work (responsibilities of our state in life) seething at the traffic jams, or exercising patience. When we ask ourselves, “What is God’s will for me?”, 88% of the time (more or less) God’s indicative will is crystal clear. God’s Permissive Will But the phrase “God’s will” also touches another category of life-experience: suffering. Suffering, of one type or another, is our constant companion as we journey through this fallen world. God has revealed that suffering was not part of his original plan, but rather was the offspring of original sin, which ripped apart the harmony of God’s creation. His indicative will to our first parents in the Garden of Eden was “do not eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:17). They disobeyed. Human nature fell; creation fell; evil attained a certain predominance in the human condition, giving rise to “the overwhelming misery which oppresses men and their inclination towards evil and death” (Catechism, 403). Here is where the distinction between God’s indicative and permissive will comes in. God did not desire or command Adam and Eve to rebel against his plan, but he did permit them to do so. Likewise, throughout human history, God does not will evil to happen (and its consequence of suffering), but he does permit it. He certainly didn’t explicitly will the Holocaust, for example, but, on the other hand, he did permit it. The question of why God permits some evil and the suffering that comes from it, even the suffering of innocents, is an extremely hard question to answer. Only the Christian faith as a whole gives a satisfactory response to it, a response that can only penetrate our hearts and minds through prayer, study, and the help of God’s grace (See Catechism #309). St Augustine’s short answer is worth mentioning, however. He wrote that if God permits evil to affect us, it is only because he knows that he can use it to bring about a greater good. We may not see that good right away; we may not see it at all during our earthly journey, in fact, but Christ’s Resurrection (Easter Sunday) is the promise that God’s omnipotence and wisdom are never trumped by the apparent triumphs of evil and suffering (Good Friday). With these basic ideas in place, in our next post we will summarize these principals and then apply them specifically to your question. What does it really mean to give your life to Christ and to trust God? Part II of II
Part II: Growing in Trust Part I of this series gave us a chance to reflect on the reasons why trust, confidence in God, is at the heart of the spiritual life. Now onto the more practical issues. Every Christian has two basic sectors in life: our contemplative sector, and our conquering sector. Contemplative The contemplative sector touches our interior life, our prayer life, our constant interior journey to discover and experience more and more deeply this boundless love, goodness, and trustworthiness of God. You have had a great jump start in this area since your search began – God has been guiding you along and moving you pretty quickly! So, in this sector, you simply need to keep moving. Keep praying, receiving the sacraments, going on retreats, doing spiritual reading… It’s very helpful in this regards to have some specific prayer commitments, and to have regular spiritual direction to receive guidance in prayer. Specifying these commitments is a great topic for spiritual direction. God’s will for you in this sector is to keep moving forward on the path that he has already led you to. And Conquering The conquering sector touches our exterior life, our mission of making a difference in the world, of imaging to those around us the very goodness of God that Christ reveals to us. This has to do with living the virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit in your everyday life: honesty, purity, patience, generosity, service, forgiveness, responsibility, faithfulness, courage, self-denial… It’s about being the kind of wife, mother, friend, etc. that Christ wants you to be. It’s about following the commandments, and most especially the one that sums up all the other ones: “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). This can also overflow into activities directly dedicated to spreading the faith (we call this “apostolate”) – like starting a Bible study or organizing pilgrimages, etc… Eighty-five percent of the time, God’s will for you in this active sector is really, really obvious: he wants you to fulfill your responsibilities as a wife and mother, as a friend and parishioner, with sincerity, love, joy… Doing that really is doing his will. Think about the Blessed Virgin Mary and St Joseph during all those years when Jesus was growing up – and Jesus himself! They lived a very “normal” life from the world’s perspective, and that’s how they glorified God and grew in their friendship with him; God worked in hidden ways through their non-dramatic daily obedience, just as he makes crops grow little by little, in hidden ways, day after day. The other 15% of the time we have doubts about what God wants of us. This may be regarding big life decisions (where to life, what job to take, who to marry, what to do with a problem child, how to deal with an elderly parent who can no longer take care of themselves…), or it may be regarding individual, personal decisions: Should I go on my parish’s pilgrimage to Rome?… In these cases, we have to exercise the virtue of “prudence.” By prudence, we ask God for light, then we reflect calmly about the pros and cons of the different options, then we get good advice from people we trust, and we wait for the decision to become clear, listening to our hearts. As regards this conquering sector, it is very helpful to grow in self-knowledge through is called a program of life. You may want to consider doing a Spiritual Exercises retreat, during which retreatants develop programs of life. This is important because we sometimes get stuck in developing our trust in God because there are blocks in our emotional or intellectual lives that we don’t identify – experiences from our past that have left their mark, usually. Spiritual direction and a program of life are excellent tools to identify and gradually remove these hidden blocks. Frustration Doesn’t Come from God In your question, I detected some frustration, and maybe even impatience. Your desire to grow closer to God is so strong! This is a grace from God, and I am so glad you are grateful for it! But watch out – frustration and impatience don’t usually come from the Holy Spirit. You see, the spiritual life, our friendship with Christ, isn’t something that we ever finish. We can never check of “trust in God” from our to-do list. It is a journey that lasts our whole life long – and it is full of incredibly beautiful discoveries (and some painful ones too). God is rehabilitating our trust, little by little. When he’s done, he takes us home. He is the doctor of our souls, and healing always takes time. He is our personal trainer, and he knows what we need and when we need it, but we don’t always like taking the necessary time to allow his grace to produce results in our lives! So when you feel that frustration or impatience, ask yourself if, objectively speaking, there is more that God wants you to be doing. If you are making a decent effort (that’s all God needs from us) on both these fronts – contemplative sector and conquering sector – then rest assured that you are moving forward on this wonderful pilgrim path through earth to Heaven, and that God is pleased and excited to have you by his side! Yours in Christ, Father John Bartunek, LC, ThD What does it really mean to give your life to Christ and to trust God? Part I of II
Part I: The Role of Trust A: Yes, absolutely – “what it boils down to is trust.” That’s the very core of the spiritual life, of redemption, of friendship with Christ and the ever-growing happiness brought by that friendship. First, I want to try and explain a little bit about why trust is so central. Then in a second post I will try to address some of your practical concerns. The History of the Universe We have to start with the history of the universe (sorry). The first period was right after Creation. The human family was living in harmony with God, and therefore with nature and each other. Then the second period began: original sin destroyed that harmony and threw the human family into a fallen world, with a fallen human nature. Suffering, evil, betrayal, frustration, angst… It all started to spread after original sin. The original harmony was shattered, barely a memory. In this midst of this second period of the history of the universe, God decided to save us, to redeem us, to lead us back into his friendship, give us hope for everlasting fulfillment, and forge a new path to Heaven. How did he do it? That’s the story of the Bible, culminating in Christ’s incarnation, passion, resurrection, and establishment of the Church. When this second period is over, we will enter into the third period, the New Heavens and the New Earth, in which suffering and evil are banished forever. So, if you reflect on this a bit, you will see that the key to the drama is original sin. It separated us from God, and that separation is what Jesus came to reverse. In what did original sin consist? If we can understand that, then we will understand ourselves and our fallen nature, and also the path that Jesus set for our spiritual rehabilitation. The Black Box in Original Sin Here is what original sin consisted in, as explained by the Catechism, #397:
Did you get that? All sin, all rebellion against and alienation from God, originates in a lack of trust in God’s goodness. The meaning, interior peace, and fulfillment we long for can only come from living in friendship with God, which requires rehabilitating our trust in him. I could write an encyclopedia about this, but for now, let’s move on to Jesus and his role in our lives. God knew that he needed to regain our trust, and he chose to do so through the Incarnation. Jesus is the revelation, the definitive revelation, of God’s totally trustworthy goodness. Jesus is the manifestation of God’s limitless mercy, love, and passionate dedication to you. Jesus Reveals God’s Trustworthiness Did you ever wonder, for example, why Jesus had to suffer so much in order to save us? (Did you see The Passion of the Christ? His suffering was gargantuan!) It’s because he wanted to show us that there is absolutely no limit to his love for us, his mercy towards us. No matter what we do to him – scourge him, betray him, insult him, abandon him, crucify him, through our sins and selfishness – he still loves us; he will never give up on us. And no matter what other people may have done to us, Jesus understands, because he has been there, and so he can walk with us. That’s just one example of the revelation of God’s trustworthiness in Jesus. And so, the Christian life consists in walking with Jesus through each day and each season, and letting him win over our hearts, letting him teach us about his wisdom, goodness, and power, so that we gradually exercise more and more trust in him, thus rebuilding our friendship with God and the deep meaning and fulfillment that that friendship brings. Okay, so that’s why you are absolutely right when you say “what it boils down to is trust.” And I am so grateful to the Holy Spirit for having given you, through your prayer and reflection, that most important insight!!! In our next post we will talk about growing in trust. Yours in Christ, Father John Bartunek, LC, ThD |
|
|
