Ave Maria Meditations
Isaiah said that Christ offered himself in this tremendous act of sacrifice because he willed to do so. But he forced his human will to accept that from which his humanity recoiled. When, on the cross, he was drinking to its bitter dregs the chalice of wormwood and gall that had so revolted his human nature in the garden, he was draining it because it was his Father’s will. He was saying to the last dread gasp: “Not my will, but thine be done.”
Love is a union of wills. And the love of God is a union of man’s will with God’s. It is so easy to unite one’s will with God’s when what he wills is sweet and easy, when his will fits hand in glove with one’s natural inclinations. But if all our days were filled with completely satisfied natural desires-ideal living conditions, economic success, robust health-how could we ever know that it was God’s will, and not our own, that we were seeking?
It is only when his will is opposed to what we would naturally choose, only when his will takes the form of a cross, and it is still embraced, that we can be sure that it is not our will, but God’s, that we want to see exalted.
If the whole purpose of life is to do the will of God, and if the only sure test of acceptance of his will is acceptance of the cross, the cross should actually be received joyfully. If the cross is lacking from his life, a person. Should begin to wonder whether God considers him worth testing. St. Paul expresses one of the great paradoxes of Christianity when he says that what is to be feared is not the cross, but the absence of it! He could not have expressed this idea more vigorously: “But if you are without chastisement, whereof all are made partakers, then you are bastards, and not sons.” It was this idea which inspired John Donne to write: “No cross is so extreme as to have none.”
The only thing feared by those who truly seek God is that their lives will not be sufficiently signed with the cross. Realizing that acceptance of trial, as the very word trial indicates, is the one conclusive way they have of knowing whether they have sacrificed their own wills and are seeking the will of God, their ambition is to be able to say with St. Paul: “With Christ I am nailed to the cross.” St. Therese was expressing a conviction that should be part of the thinking of every member of the Church when she said: “What I fear is not suffering, but my own will.”
Incidentally, it is a waste of time to wonder whether one fulfilled God’s will last year, or ten or twenty years ago. If we failed in doing his will in the past, it is sufficient that we have a general contrition for all past failures. It is a mistake to fret over them in detail. If God not only forgives but forgets sincerely repented mistakes, why should one go back and pick over them?
It is also not helpful to wonder what God’s will may be for us next week or next year. Christ said: “Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will have anxieties of its own. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” Cardinal Newman observed, in connection with possible future trials, that one should not wonder how one would measure up in a time of persecution. He said that extraordinary graces would be given which are needed at such a time. This is true of any future trial.
It is important to concentrate, therefore, on the present will of God. After all, there is only the present day, the present hour. The past is gone forever and nobody knows the length of his future, nor what it will bring. God’s will in the present hour is always clear: He makes his will completely evident through the Commandments, one’s state in life, and the circumstances and events of which life is woven.
Fr. Bertrand Weaver C.P.(from “His Cross in Your Life”)
