If the doctrine of conformity to God’s will is to mean invariable acceptance of the existing order, then it would be imperfection ever to change anything at all. A soul would do wrong to change from the lay state in order to enter religious life; a single person would have to stay single because such was the state to which he happened to belong. But God’s will not only allows for changes but often demands them. It is likely to demand a number of significant changes as the result of the Second Vatican Council, which itself would never have been convened were the status quo to be infallibly identified with God’s will.
It is perhaps typical of our age that people enjoy the hunt more than they enjoy the find. It is a commonplace to observe how useless is the pursuit of leisure if people do not know what to do with their leisure when they have got it. It would seem to be the same with regard to the will of God: people talk a lot about it, and are forever harping upon how assiduous they are in the search for it, yet when the will of God is shown them, they look the other way. Important as search and expectation are, they are not to be rated above performance.
A few months ago, I was sitting in a doctor’s waiting-room in Bristol. Also waiting were two other men, neither of whom I knew. One was reading back issues of Country Life; the other, too agitated to read, was restlessly moving about and looking at his watch. After a while, this second man came over to where I was sitting, and said this: “Everyone gets ill at some time or another. I’ve been ill before, and I’ve known it was all part of the day’s work. But this time, it’s the wrong illness.” Then, since I had no comment to make, he added, “And it’s come at the wrong time.” The other man, without looking up from his Country Life and showing no sign that he had heard, said, “But to the right person.”
If we believe in the providence of God, it is always the right person who gets the right expression of God’s will. If there is mystery in much connected with the subject, there is nothing but straightforwardness here. However straightforward the principle, even however blatantly obvious the manifestation, there is always the obstacle of what might be called escapeful thinking. When presented with the occasion, we look for a way around it, for a way out. Our view of God’s will is bifocal: long-sightedly we see it coming, near-sightedly we fail to recognize it.
It is a curious thing that while we in America and England are more free than most with our counsels of perfection, we are noticeably reluctant to follow them to their conclusions. Historians may well point to this era as one in which the religious idea was matter for popular discussion. But if all this inquiry does not have the will of God as its aim, it might just as well not be going on. People will tell you airily they are searching for truth, and if you talk to them about God’s will, they object that you are being too narrow. If they are looking for a truth that is “broader” or “more objective” or “more scientific” than “religious” truth, it is not surprising that they miss truth itself when they come across it. The truth of God is the will of God, as it is also the love and the power of God, and unless it is sought on its own terms, it is mistaken in the substitutes men have made for it. The will of God may contain a mystery, but there is all the difference in the world between a mystery and a confusion.
Chapter 12
Embracing God’s Will
The response of the human will is easily tested. It is simply a question of whether we make, to the point of acting on it, the divine will our own or whether the words “Thy will be done” are no more than a presumed passport.
You may object that even this fails as a touchstone because it is by no means clear what is meant by “making God’s will one’s own.” All right, by way of explanation we can once again draw upon the relationship between two people who are fond of one another.
When a husband or wife says, “Leave my wishes out of this: you should know by now that in marrying you, I made your happiness more important than my own,” we have a reasonably clear idea of what is implied. Such a remark must, if it is sincere, come from a heart that is not greedy for its own satisfaction. There has been self-giving here; there has been recognition not merely of another’s rights as a married person but of something else that, although obviously suggested by the marriage vow, is not explicitly demanded in the contract. The handing over has been complete. “Whatever makes you happy, that I choose. As far as I am concerned, alternatives no longer present themselves: I follow a single course — the one that pleases you.”
In man’s relationship with God, the situation is much the same. By implication, the Christian is committed to what pious books used to call the “good-pleasure” of God. The graces of Baptism are such that they destine the soul that makes proper use of them to the highest holiness and to the fulfillment of God’s good-pleasure. The Christian obligation admits of a minimal service, but it calls to a maximal one. Just as a married person, by satisfying his responsibilities and not being unfaithful, is honoring the requirements of marriage, so the Christian, by trying to keep out of mortal sin, is fulfilling the letter of the law. Such a Christian is obeying the will of God, but he can hardly be said to have made God’s will his own. He is not putting God’s good-pleasure first.
To “make God’s will one’s own” is accordingly to establish a single criterion. It is to forget about rights and personal inclinations; it is to look only to one guiding principle. On the negative side, it is to discount prejudice, worldly standards of judgment, and material advantage; on the positive side, it is to make love the final arbiter. When the human will has surrendered to the divine will as fully as this, then God’s purpose in creating the soul has been achieved and life for that soul assumes balance and order; until such a surrender has taken place, balance and order are uncertain. (This point will be developed in a later chapter, when the effects of conformity to God’s will are examined.)
When St. Paul urges the Corinthians to “do all their works in charity”38 this is exactly what he means. If they love the will of God more than they love their own wills, they must inevitably be doing works of charity all day long. They will be willing what is best; they will be loving God and their neighbor in the ordinary things they have to do. And the things that are done to them, whether bringing joy or sorrow, will be received in charity. Having chosen God’s will in everything, they see everything as evidence of God’s will.
In the eighty-third psalm,39 the sacred writer expresses this interaction between the human and the divine will. “My heart and body have rejoiced in the living God . . . Blessed is the man whose help is from You, O God, for in his heart he has purposed to mount by the degrees appointed . . . The lawgiver shall bestow his blessing, and they shall go from virtue to virtue . . . Better is one day in God’s house above thousands. I have chosen to be abject in the house of my God, rather than to dwell in the tents of sinners.” The soul has made the choice of God’s will in preference to temporal pleasure, so it can rejoice in being abject if abjection is the state God bestows. God is the lawgiver, and whatever comes from the lawgiver, be it pleasing or painful, is a blessing. Those thus blessed go, inevitably, from virtue to virtue; God’s help, which is His will, goes with them.
The serious choice of God’s interests in preference to self-interest involves a considerable reorientation. It means that self ’s whole interest is pleasing God. Self is pushed out of the picture. Nor can self, still looking around for satisfaction as it will go on doing without willing to, claim any great merit for what seems so heroic a choice. Self recognizes the full truth of our Lord’s words: “You have not chosen me, but I have first chosen you.”40 In the practical order, the change of focus is found to make a great difference. It means that instead of serving God in the way we think He ought to like, we serve Him in any way we can — which will be the way He wants. We let God choose the way. Instead of putting our confidence in various practices of prayer, penance, charity, and so on that we have devised for ourselves, we shall be putting our confidence in His handling of our lives. What we would draw up in the way of a sch
eme or rule of life may objectively look far more “perfect” than what in fact is required of us by God’s will. But “perfection” now denotes only one thing: God’s will. When the soul has surrendered to all that is God’s will, there is no longer any need to bother about different interpretations of perfection.
A would-be saint cannot always be certain that extra fasting is going to please God, but he can always be certain that self-surrender will. Hours spent in prayer may be a form of self-indulgence; surrender to God’s will can never be. It is the substitution of the whole for the parts; it is directing attention to the end instead of to the means. The service of God is not to be restricted to performance; it looks to the attitude of mind and heart. Outward execution follows the inward actuation; it is no substitute for the activity of the will. When a man’s will is united with the will of God, the acts he performs flow from a more significant source than ingenuity in devising a form of service.
People, and especially beginners in the spiritual life, so often mistake the theoretical and idealized will of God for the actual. A girl, for instance, will judge that the most perfect thing for her to do is to leave the world and become a nun. In the counsels of perfection, there is every justification for this: “If thou wilt be perfect,” our Lord said, “sell what thou hast, give to the poor, and follow me.”41 But the point is it may not be the vocation for her. She has been right to judge that she is called to perfection, but mistaken in judging that the convent life was to be the setting for it.
She makes a trial of the life and after a period of trial comes away. The test of her essential vocation is still going on, and is perhaps more searching now than when she entered the novitiate: What is her attitude now toward the will of God? Much will depend upon whether she looks back with resentment or with gratitude; whether she looks forward trusting to luck or believing in God’s providence. She can say either, “The whole thing was a delusion. I was a fool to aim at perfection. I gave myself to God, and He has shown that He does not want me. In future I make no offers, thank you, and will follow my own will,” or, as she is being given the grace to say, “I went in because I thought it was the will of God: I can assume, therefore, that although He did not mean me to persevere He did mean me to try: I came out because it was God’s will that I should: all I have to do now is to find out what kind of perfection He wants from me, and where I can best realize it; what I want above all is His satisfaction; my happiness is His will, and His glory is my will.”
It may be inferred that in the more strictly interior order of prayer, the same principle will apply; there will be either confusion and discouragement, followed perhaps by the decision to give up praying altogether, or there will be abandonment in faith to the purpose of God. In the beginning, there may have been all sorts of preconceived ideas as to how prayer ought to be made, as to what it would feel like when going properly, as to the stages that might be expected in the advance toward the higher mystical transformations. Then, in the actual experience of prayer, comes something quite different. The question is now, as it was in the case of the girl who had a vocation to try her vocation but whose true vocation was to something she had not thought of, which way will the soul jump? Is it to be: “I should never have started on the course of prayer. It was not for me. If I want to serve God, I must find some other way. This experience has been a stumbling-block to my faith”? Or is it to be: “I have no ideas about prayer anymore. I am incapable of practicing the methods suggested. I want to praise God in my prayer, but I find I cannot do it. I do not know the meaning of love; all I know is that if God wills this state for me, a state that seems a waste, I will it too. His will means more to me than my spiritual satisfaction or sense of security; His will is my whole desire”? If the ultimate test is looked for, this is it.
In case some may see in this doctrine of substituting God’s will for one’s own an alienation of something that we have no right to alienate, it would be as well to clear up the point before taking on anything else. The whole weight of the argument rests on the fact that man only really begins to live when he has begun to die to self. Far from being contemptuous of human freedom, the theory sees true human freedom as being realized only when the human will surrenders itself wholly to the divine. So it is not so much an abdication as an initiation. There is here no loss to human personality but rather infinite enrichment.
The reason most people are unsure of themselves is because they have never properly found themselves in the context of God’s will. If all men made it their first objective to discover God’s will and live by it, they would find for themselves not only the individualities God meant them to have and develop but also help to create the environment God meant them to have and develop. God’s will would then be standard throughout the world — standard not in the sense of a force compelling regimentation, but in the sense of grace and truth inviting cooperation. It is only because man’s final purposes and immediate endeavors become so overshadowed by what He wants that they drift farther and farther away from the providential scheme. The wider the gap, the more difficult it is for the individual human being to see the relationship.
Hence the many confusions in the world. If the connection between God’s will and man’s true interest were seen, how could there be any problem about civil rights, nuclear warheads, or aid to starving peoples? But since the connection is not seen, the remedies applied are at best social and humanitarian. Man is made in the image and likeness of God, and when this fact is overlooked, everything takes on a humanist character. So of course there is chaos. Where the source of human justice is left out of account, and the justice of God is His love, the human aptitude for injustice has only human uprightness to oppose it. In a fallen human race, the natural virtues, left to themselves and divorced from supernatural grace, are not enough.
So, for humanity at large, as for its individual members, the main trouble is that of not finding its destined place in the plan of God. Since we are here concerned more with the particular than with the general, we must get back to the soul’s search for its true identity. This is a personal thing, a unique adventure in every case, so it will be more by prayer than by argument and study that any progress toward truth-in-self and self-in-truth will be made. What follows is given rather as an incitement to pray than in proof of a thesis.
“A man must live his own life.” This statement may be made by way of excuse, authorization, correction, or sympathy. It is not on any showing a very original reflection. But however superficial, there is an inwardness to the pronouncement that deserves a closer look. A man has to live his own life and nobody else’s. A man has to live, and not merely put in time until he dies. A man has to come to terms with the life he is given, however dull or disagreeable the setting, whatever his aspirations to a nobler life, wherever the direction of his main interests.
In The Shoes of the Fisherman, Mr. Morris West makes one of the characters, a journalist, say, “I’m not a man; I’m just a name in a suit. There’s no me at all. One push, and I fall apart.” You meet that man every day; he is all over the world. You cannot even push him because there is nothing to push. There is no resistance to pressure. It is easier to help a strong character who is wrong than a weak one who is right.
Why are there so many — why are, perhaps, we ourselves — like Mr. West’s fictional character (although it should be added that the character in the novel shows himself to be of tougher quality than his self-appraisal suggests)? Is it not because, in order to be yourself, you have to be the person God means you to be, and if you are not that person, you are nothing?
There is every justification for the present-day cult of the unhero; it is the attempted justification of ourselves. If we refuse to unite ourselves with the will that has created us for a specific purpose, we are rudderless creatures. Clinging to our own cherished images of ourselves, we sacrifice substance. If we surrendered ourselves to the true image that God has of us, frankly accepting the discrepancy between the reality of God’s wil
l and the dream we have created for ourselves, we would be not only holier and happier but also more of a help to other people. When what they want to lean on is something solid, how can people be helped by what is itself leaning on unreality? There can be no support but in truth, and there is no truth apart from God’s will. We find our identity only in God.
It is a characteristic of the young to indulge in hero worship. Nature has arranged that they should. If the small boy of six did not admire his father and try to imitate him, there would be something wrong either with the small boy or with the father. At a later stage in growing up, during the period of adolescence and perhaps for a while after it, admiration and imitation go out to those with whom there may be no personal relationship and who may even be complete strangers. All this is a part of education.
Standards are not always conveyed by means of the spoken or written word, nor do they always come from the constituted authority. The impact may be made through example, appearance, mannerism, a particular ideal which is felt to be important. All this is perfectly normal, but if it is to be productive of good, there are two conditions to be satisfied: the hero must possess qualities that are worth admiring; and the admirer must retain his own personality. If the one admired is shallow, the influence is not likely to last; if he has character but no principles, the influence will be malign; if he has character and principles, and at the same time does not want to absorb the other’s individuality, the influence is almost bound to be good — almost, because the other person’s attitude must be taken into account. However admirable the hero is, and this would be true even if the hero is a saint, the admirer is a person in his own right and may not become a carbon-copy — even of a saint. Moreover, if he, the admirer, continues to model himself on someone else when he is no longer in the formative stage of normal development, he will remain forever immature. He will not be the integrated person God means him to be. He will belong neither to God nor to himself. He will be just a shadow.
Prayer and the Will of God Page 9