Scripture:
Isaiah 26:1-6
Matthew 7:21, 24-27
Reflection:
Today’s gospel presents a most challenging element. “Not everyone who calls Lord, Lord will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” Like many things Jesus says in the Gospels, there is an element of vagueness in this statement. We humans crave the absoluteness and actions that can be measured, judged and quantified. In Jesus’s world, the immense abundance of God outclasses all of our human measures.
The action Jesus mentions is seeking the will of the Father. This requires a different posture. Happily, we are blessed by our founder, St. Paul of the Cross in this regard. His prayer and reflection on this topic are wisdom for us today. Ultimately, Paul sees God as all good and trusts that the source of all goodness will give him whatever is good, regardless of whether the individual person thinks that it is good. Paul is extraordinarily wise in not judging the trials that come to him. He believes in and directs others in a simple philosophy; if the source of ultimate good gifts us with trials, then the trials must be good. If we are gifted with pain or anguish, then this must be good as well.
Paul believes that many people inflict suffering onto themselves by believing that they know better than the Lord. And in rejecting some of the “gifts” which God gives us we really aren’t people who follow the Divine Will.
Second, Paul adds that if you submit yourself to God’s will, even if events transpire contradictory to your personal desires, then you can at least take heart that you are working with a greater authority. This doesn’t necessitate total passivity. On the contrary, we will be challenged much like Jesus was in the garden. What it does mean is that we aren’t tossed so much by the ups and downs or the ebbs and flows of life. It frees us from the childish notion that good days and bad days are rewards or punishments. As Paul the Apostle reminds us that our identity is in Christ. Who we are is who we are in Christ. So regardless of the outcome of our days, whether we may judge them as good days or not-so-good days, the real meaning is that we see our true selves and our connection to Christ.
Yet Paul of the Cross will take this one step further. He goes so far as to say, Feed on the will of God. Let God’s will be nourishment and food. Paul referred to this as “having the food of the divine will in a pure spirit of faith and love.” When you begin to discover that pursuing the will of God is a real blessing and that it nourishes your soul, then you will find yourself returning again and again to the table of that nourishment.
At seventy-seven years of age, Paul hadn’t changed his understanding. To Anna Maria Calcagnini, he writes:
Now, I would like to tell you about a principle of faith that embraces the highest perfection. Jesus Christ said to his apostles one day that his food was to do the will of his eternal Father. What an important point this is. Therefore, in every event of life, in all interior and exterior worries, desolations, aridities…. In bodily pain, in all of these find the food of the divine will…
Another point to ponder in this Advent season.
Fr. David Colhour, C.P., is the Provincial Superior of Holy Cross Province. He resides in Chicago, Illinois.