WILL

For many of us the New Year seems to bring with it a certain melancholy for the year past and a determination that the year ahead is going to be different. Every year we try as Tennyson says to “ring out the false and ring in the true” through our seemingly endless list of resolutions for the 365 days ahead. I’m no different. I’ve got my laundry list of improvements pinned to the refrigerator and the impending sense of doom to go along with it…sigh…

In reflecting on “God’s will” and what I’d like my life to look like this coming year I’m reminded of the difference between “eulogy” and “resume” virtues that David Brooks so beautifully examines in his NY Times article from April 11, 2015 entitled The Moral Bucket List. In it he writes “speakers are always telling young people to follow their passions. Be true to yourself. This is a vision of life that begins with self and ends with self. But people on the road to inner light do not find their vocations by asking, what do I want from life? They ask, what is life asking of me? How can I match my intrinsic talent with one of the world’s deep needs?” Not a bad set of guiding questions me thinks…

I remember a talk I heard years ago by Fr. John Powell, SJ in which he said that God may or may not have a “specific” will for each of our lives; to marry a certain person and have x-number of children, attend a particular college, follow a specific career path, etc. Nobody really knows if God has a specific will for our lives or not. But, he said, Jesus has made it perfectly clear that God absolutely has a “general” will for each of us; and that is to simply do something loving with our lives. St. Ignatius said, “Our most noble desires, those things that are closest to our hearts that make us most happy and fulfilled deep down reveal God’s plan for us.”

To that end, personally, this year I’m going to work at adopting the mantra “I want and choose what deepens God’s life and love in me” and then try my damnedest to surrender to whatever that may be, even if it leads to sickness, conflict, or the treadmill.

In the end, we can pray together the wise words of Thomas Merton

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”