6.12.2014

Saying "Yes" to God - Part 3 of 3

The test of faith infers a leap into the “hands of the living God”.  [Heb 10:31]  Pope Saint John Paul II expressed this thought sublimely when he wrote, “Allow (your) spirit to be overturned in order to make it turn towards God.”  [Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, no. 26 (1984)]  

Faith leads me to know “that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear”.  [Heb 11:3]  By faith, I reach for “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”.  [Heb 11:1]  By faith, I accept citizenship in “a better country, that is, a heavenly one”.  [Heb 11:16]  By faith, I discern that the “goods” of the natural world are not good enough to effect my salvation.

Should I stubbornly withhold my assent to faith until the end, starving my unfortunate soul with a catalog of excuses and complaints longer than Les Misérables, I will deserve my eternal death for this pathetic reason, if no for none other:  The rebellious mind is always opposed to the “mind of Christ”.  [1Cor 2:16]  I may choose either rebellion or the peace of Christ but not both. And decide I must. If I choose the mind of Christ, it must increase. Anything else is a portal to selfishness and materialism, an intuition of death, and hence must decrease.

Therefore, the virtue of temperance involves a resounding yes as well as a powerful no. Keeping in mind the cautionary story of Adam and Eve, God calls me to say yes to the good that he wants. I am to say no to disobeying God and no to the good things and good people of this world that God does not will me to possess!  

"FOR OUR business is not to live many years, and to become learned, or to make a name in the world, but to walk to God, to get near to Him, to unite ourselves to Him . . . .

"LET US have a full realization of the drama which is being enacted, and in which we have to play our part. This drama fills all time and all space. It began, with the very beginning of things, in the angelic world, by an act of disobedience. This brought another in its train here below, one which has been repaired by the obedience of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

"ALL INTELLIGENT beings are ranged in two camps, those who obey and those who obey not; and the struggle of the two forces knows no truce. Each has its king, and he who claims to withdraw himself from obedience passes by this very fact under the domination of the other King. God for god, I prefer my own." (2)


The only way I may know the good that God wants for me is to pray and wait in silence for his salvation: “For we walk by faith,and not by sight”.  [2Cor 5:7]  Every human story reveals a longing to recover what was lost by Adam and Eve’s tragic immoderation. Like Adam and Eve in happier days, the human soul longs to walk with God in the cool of the evening breeze.  [cf. Gen 3:8]  

It is sanctifying grace alone that sustains my fundamental orientation to God and empowers my human will to collaborate with God for the sake of my own salvation. The grace-filled virtue of temperance empowers me to say amen decisively to God and the good that he wants, to keep his commandments, turning neither to the left or the right. Hence, God’s own glory illumines my path to him, purifying my unworthy soul by degrees “for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit”.  [1Cor 3:17-18]  

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(1)  “Instinctively”, a word suggesting how deeply 1.) the primordial fall has permeated the souls of all the living, and 2.) the human soul longs to be reconciled and made holy

(2)  [COMMENTARY ON THE RULE OF ST BENEDICT Prologue by Dom Paul Delatte, Trans. Dom Justin McCann. London:  Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd (1921) pp 3,5]  Dom Delatte, Order of St. Benedict, was third abbot of the Abbey of Saint-Pierre de Solesme and Superior General of the Congregation of Benedictines of France. The COMMENTARY was composed in 1913.