Our support in our struggles

[Mark Dohle]

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Our support in our struggles

There is one word I heed and continually ponder; it alone is everything to me; I live by it and die by it, and it is the holy will of God. It is my daily food. My whole soul listens intently to God’s wishes. I do always what God asks of me, although my nature often quakes, and I feel that the magnitude of these things is beyond my strength. I know well what I am of myself, but I also know what the grace of God is, which supports me. ---Sr. Faustina’s Diary 652

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Religious language can be off-putting and even at times harmful to some people. The phrase “The Will of God” can evoke strong negative reactions when contemplated, or if someone throws it at them in a controlling or demeaning way.

St. Paul talks about Jesus being God’s “Yes”; it is something that gives light and life, leading to healing and conversion if understood properly. We live in a world that is filled with a great deal of suffering. Much of it comes from not doing “God’s Will” but seeking something apart from it.

If ‘God’s Will’ is someone’s daily food what does that mean? Well, is it God’s will that we hate ourselves, or fight and demean others? Is it ‘God’s Will’ that we seek to use others in a sexual way, or even through commerce? What about our self-destructive addictions, is that willed by God for us? I would say no. Sin is a way to run from life into death, though in doing so we are seeking some ‘good’ that is something other than what we need for a deeper fuller life.

In seeking to live out ‘God’s Will’ we slowly over time, as we are healed by grace and experience, learn the joy of our dependence on God’s love and the paradox of how that makes us more truly, deeply human. Self-knowledge allows us to grow in love of ourselves and others……we learn that we have always been loved and that God’s response to us is ‘Yes’…..we are the ones who say ‘No’ in a less conscious manner.

It is about turning away from what is self-destructive towards that which gives life. It is about producing a hundredfold, about loving ourselves and others, and not being afraid of the journey we all must make as we make our pilgrimage through life.-Br.MD