Why do we Fear ... Anything?
“Scimus
autem quoniam diligentibus Deum omnia cooperantur in bonum.”
“And we know that to them
that love God, all things work together unto good” (Romans, 8.28)
Absolutely
nothing happens to us that God does not either expressly
will — or permit — for our sanctification,
for the salvation of our souls and the souls of countless others
of whom we know nothing ... yet.
Understanding this, we should fear nothing, although we may
not welcome everything.
Why ... Why, then,
do we fear?
In the Pater Noster, the
Our Father, given us by Christ Himself, we find seven petitions,
but let us focus carefully on one in particular —
“Thy will be done on earth [that is to say, in
everything pertaining to our lives] as it is in Heaven.”
— in an effort to answer this very real question:
Our prayer, our deepest desire — which
is (or should be) the perfect accomplishment of God's most holy
will within us (is there a greater good?) in other words, the
fulfillment of our lives in Christ — is contained in this one
single petition — in which every other petition is implicitly uttered.
Let us look at what we are asking of God in this petition:
-
That God fulfill
within us perfectly His most holy will — not
ours.
-
That He make of
us what pleases Him — not us.
-
That He do with
us what pleases Him — not us.
-
That He give to
us, as it pleases Him — not us.
1
-
That He take from
us what pleases Him — not us.
-
That in our suffering, in union
with Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane — even here we ask
that He fulfill within us perfectly His most holy will
— not as we will, but as He wills.
2
Divine
Complicity
Once we have prayed this — ex toto
corde, completely from the heart — our life is no longer our
own. It never was, but we have made it explicit to ourselves. And
upon praying this, our lives, together with the world around
us, change forever. We have entered into a compact with God,
into the very will of God which is the act of God; in a word, into
Divine complicity.
Everything, then, that subsequently
touches upon us: all that we experience, all that we suffer,
all that we endure — everything: our state in life, our poverty
no less than our wealth, our illness no less than our health, our
adversities no less than our good fortune, our ill-repute for His
Name no less than our honor among men, the cardboard over our head
no less than the stately roof, the shabby clothes no less than the
elegant, the suffering no less than the joy, the ridicule no less
than the accolades — all, all, we offer to Him, accept from Him
with equal gratitude … knowing that they come to us from Him;
that whatever our condition in life, it is His will being
mysteriously fulfilled within us. This conviction, often painfully
at odds with the suffering within us and around us … is the great
actus Fidei, or Act of Faith against all the apparent evidence
that contradicts it. We do not understand what has become of us
and we can adduce no reason or purpose — yet in holy simplicity
and docility we accept in faith that it is the very best thing possible
for us — even as it apparently contradicts what appears to be good
for us. It is, in a word, total submission to the will of
God in all things; the taking of all things from the hand of God:
the bitter as eagerly as the sweet, realizing that we know nothing
of what is good for us apart from the express will of God revealed
to us in Holy Scripture, and the Teachings of Holy Mother the Church.
Not
yet
It may never be revealed to us in
this life — but revealed it will be, for die we must and after death,
arrive at understanding. This hopelessly entangled skein of misery,
suffering, and misfortune — only punctuated by fleeting moments
of respite, too brief to attain to any sustainable happiness — this
dense reticulation of calcified knots, grown tighter by the years,
unyielding to the probe of reason — all these utterly involuted
complexities will unfold as so many segments in the history of our
lives being drawn by the finger of God upon the fabric of eternity.
We do not understand any of them until we see the whole which has
been configured through them in the soul’s cooperating with God
in the dispensation of all things.
If, as Saint Paul tells us, we cooperate
with God in all things, it is quite beside the point that we understand
them, and very much to the point that we accept them, play our part
in them, all-unknowing but still all-cooperating. Our lives are
as so many golden threads amid a myriad of others, and docilely
we allow the hand of God to weave this thread where He wills and
how He wills. The moment we resist the hand of God, tension ensues,
and the whole fabric trembles under it. Countless millions, billions,
of other golden threads are affected in places, times, regions,
utterly remote to us and unknown by us.
Who among us can presume to follow
to its utter end the concatenation of events that are put in motion
by the simplest act of a man? It moves in unanticipated permutations
that reverberate throughout the universe. Every act is an exponential
unto itself, and every subsequent movement as it courses through
time touches upon, changes, deflects, directs, and in a thousand
ways influences the lives of others in ways unguessed — and until
the end of time as hidden in Christ as our very lives.3
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
_________________________
1
“Naked came
I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the
Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: as it hath pleased the
Lord so is it done: blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1.21)
2 “And going
a little further, he fell upon his face, praying, and saying: My
Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me. Nevertheless
not as I will, but as thou wilt.” (Saint Matthew 26.39)
3 Colossians 3.3
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