In a spirit of conformity to His holy will we should accustom ourselves for the love of God to putting up with all the little daily vexations, such as a word said that wounds our self esteem; a fly that annoys us; the barking of a dog; knocking into something as we walk along; a small accidental hurt; a light suddenly going out; a rent in our clothes; a pen that won't write, and so on.
(Conformity to the will of God can even give our fields better crops than those of our neighbors.)
In one way it is even more important to practice conformity to God's will in these small things than in larger ones, both because they are more frequent and because the habit of supporting them in a Christian spirit prepares us in advance and in a natural manner to show resignation when we have to face serious difficulties.
We should wish with the divine will for heat and cold, storm and calm, and all the vagaries and inclemency of the elements.
We should in short accept whatever kind of weather God sends us, instead of supporting it with impatience or anger as we usually do when it is contrary to what we desire.
We should avoid saying, for instance, "What awful heat!" "What terrible cold!" "What shocking weather!" "Just my bad luck!" and other expressions of the same kind which only serve to show our lack of faith and of submission to God's will.
Not only should we wish the weather to be as it is because God has made it so but, whatever inconvenience it may cause us, we should repeat with the three youths in the fiery furnace: Cold, heat, snow and ice, lightning and clouds, winds and tempests, bless the Lord; praise and exalt him above all forever. 55
The elements themselves are blessing and glorifying God by doing His holy will, and we also should bless and glorify Him in the same way.
Besides, even if the weather is inconvenient for us, it may be convenient for someone else. If it prevents us from doing what we want to do, it may be helping another. And even if it were not so, it should be enough for us that it is giving glory to God and that it is God who wishes it to be as it is.
St. Francis Borgia, the third General of the Society of Jesus, provides us a good example in this matter. He was once traveling to a house of the Society when it was snowing hard and bitterly cold, and his arrival was delayed until a late hour of the night when everybody was in bed and asleep.
He had to wait some time before his knocking aroused someone to let him in, and then to the apologies for keeping him waiting so long in such foul weather he answered cheerfully that it was a great consolation to him to think that it was God who had dropped so much snow on him.
This practice of conformity to His will is so pleasing to God that it often has a visible influence on the material things of life.
There is a story in the Lives of the Desert Fathers of a laborer whose fields always gave better crops than those of his neighbors. When asked the reason he replied that he always had whatever kind of season or weather he chose. "I never wish for any other kind of weather but what God wishes" he explained, "and as I wish for everything that pleases God, He too gives me the sort of crop that pleases me."
No comments:
Post a Comment