“With Him there is no possibility of failure.” (Saint Josemaría).
I have spent great swarths of my life resisting the direction that my life was going in…
When I was younger, I could not wait to be older. When I was older, I worried that I was too old. When I was busy, I craved quiet time. When times were quiet, I wished to be busy. When my children were younger, I wished that they were more grown up and independent. And now that my children are a little older, I worry that time is flying too fast and that I cannot keep up with them.
And I have been thinking about that today.
You see, there is an awful lot of stress involved in resisting the direction that my life is heading in. And I have been reflecting on that stress today. When I think of the Saints there is ONE thing that every Saint has in common. And that ONE thing is docility.
The Saints do not resist the natural course of their lives. If they are healthy, they are docile in their health. If they are unhealthy, they are docile in their illness. Their docility is expressed as humble acceptance of whatever their life becomes.
The Blessed Virgin is the mother of us all and the most perfectly docile being every created. And I can say this because although Christ is Perfectly Docile and nothing is greater than He, the Blessed Virgin is a CREATURE – a creation of God – and God the Son is not created but is begotten of God the Father…
And in understanding this, Saint Josemaría called this sort of docility of the Saints – this sort of conviction that everything would be alright and that all things would lead to the Good a sort of holy superiority complex. And he called it this because he understood that when we trust in God nothing can hold us back or restrict or frighten us.
And what this really means is that when Christ called Himself the Prince of Peace, He meant it. Because as the Prince of Peace, He is able to lead me along the path of my life. And if I chose to follow His lead, without struggling or worrying or resisting. If I chose rather to imitate the docility of the Blessed Virgin and of the Saints. If I choose the imitate the docility of Christ Himself, who surrendered all of How own power and consented to die on the Cross for love of me, then I am really just ensuring that I can unite myself with Christ.
And in understanding this, I am convinced that there is simply no other way that I could possibly wish to proceed. Either I could unite myself more closely to God Himself by trusting more firmly in God Himself – or I could struggle and try to do things my own way, when it is God Himself who actually controls everything…
And in understanding this today, I understand that I must join the winning team – so to speak. And the only way for me to do this is to act with docility to everything that happens in my life, which is the Holy Will of God…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
Comments