We
are on course to the end of the Easter season. Four days from now, we shall
mark the Ascension after which we enter a 10-day wait for the descent of the
Holy Spirit. The first reading details a spread of the faith, the fruit of the
missionary thrusts of the Apostles. The Apocalypse casts a vision of the
Kingdom that transcends the narrow boundaries of Israel and the Jews. Yes,
salvation may have come from the Jews (Jn 4:22) but through Jesus’ apostolic
instruments, our great Apostles and their successors, this salvation has been
extended to the whole of creation.
Whilst
the vision is panoramic, meaning that it attempts to reach the ends of the
world, however, the Gospel sets this enterprise within the context of the
indwelling of the Blessed Trinity in our lives. For God to live with us, it
requires that we love Jesus and keep His word. In short, we are invited to
embrace God’s will so that His kingdom may come to fruition first through us
and then to the world.
The
question is what would constitute the will of God? And how does God’s will play
in the salvation of the world and the establishment of God’s Kingdom?
Firstly,
salvation is a loaded word in what could be termed as the universe of the self.
In this “self-ish” kind of world, salvation literally means the ability
to merit one’s own redemption—a tilt to our Pelagian self-effort. If we are in
deep trouble, we should just depend on ourselves to save us. It makes more
sense because we are autonomous and independent beings. However, Biblical
salvation leans rather to our inability to save ourselves which requires that
we be saved. Only God can save. An important proviso is this: although we are
redeemed by our Saviour, nevertheless, salvation is never without our
cooperation. Thus, the God who created us without our consent cannot save us
without our consent.
It
is in this context of our cooperation that we consider the will of God. We
cooperate with God by accepting His will. The challenge is that God’s will can
be rather inscrutable. When your business is going well, your health is in
tip-top condition, people love you and any permutation you can find that says
that life is good—these are the times when you would and rightly feel the
strong breeze of God’s love and in such a situation, God’s will is definitely
acceptable.
When
your sight fails you, your bones break easily, your son or daughter is struck
down with an incurable disease, you crunch your figures correctly and yet your
business is not picking up and worst of all, when you pay your dues and things
are not turning out the way you have anticipated, then the will of God can be
incomprehensible. Where is God when I most need Him? How can God allow evil to
befall good people?
Perhaps
we can shine a little light to help us acknowledge and trust God’s will by
making a distinction between the positive or active and the permissive or
passive will of God. They are worlds apart. God actively and positively will
our good. For example, He would have positively willed that both Adam and Eve
live out their natural existence in peace and harmony. However, when freedom is
involved, God’s permissive will is bound to respect our choice even of a lesser
good. If you think about it, the history of salvation is really a history
littered with our poor choices. In other words, God allows for bad choices
because of a greater good that can come. The Easter Exultet named this as
the felix
culpa,
“O necessary sin of Adam that won for us so great a Redeemer”.
Unfortunately,
in a framework of entitlement, meaning the idea of a “god” who owes it to us,
the mention of God’s permissive will suggests of an evil deity who is happy for
us to suffer. The point which we may be unaware of is that God’s will,
positively or permissively, is never more than what we can bear. Whatever bad
things may befall us, “Faith
gives us the certainty that God would not permit an evil if He did not cause a
good to come from that very evil, by ways that we shall fully know only in
eternal life”
(CCC 324).
Despite
what we think, God is labouring hard for our salvation. At the very moment when
Adam and Eve fell, God has already set in motion our salvation for He wants all
to be saved in, by and through Jesus Christ His Son.
Now,
coming back to this panoramic portrait of God’s desiring to save mankind and
the world, the picture is pleasantly positive. It is an endeavour of epic
proportion. And yet, there is a fact which we frequently do not take into
account in this big picture of salvation. This fact is not a proof of God’s
powerlessness but rather directs our attention to a certain logic which says
that salvation must be worked out in the heart of man—for there is an ongoing
war for his soul. We have, for the longest time, lived the delusion that the
Devil is nothing more than a figment of our imagination. In a way, he is, if
you watch some of the horror movies. The graphic depiction of the devil has not
scared us into a fear of him but rather lured some into a fascination with evil
and the occult. Maybe you understand why the universal Church has asked of us
to recite the prayer to the Archangel St Michael at the end of the Mass—a
prayer arising from our belated realisation and recognition that in the
salvation of the world, the devil is relentless in his quest to thwart the will
of God for the world.
In
conclusion, there is a cost or a price to be paid and we ought to count the
cost. The more we embrace God’s will, the more the devil will attempt to derail
our decision and destroy our desire. A person on the road to perdition will
readily encounter a road without obstacles. And this brings me to the second
point, that is, the acceptance of God’s will requires a perspective that must
venture beyond the material. Presently, we all associate health or wealth as
God’s blessing and consider infirmity or poverty as God’s displeasure. But the
saints have taught us that God’s will is always benevolent even if it does not
seem so. My
God, I do not know what must come to me today. But I am certain that nothing
can happen to me that you have not foreseen, decreed, and ordained from
eternity. That is sufficient for me. I adore your impenetrable and eternal
designs, to which I submit with all my heart. I desire, I accept them all, and
I unite my sacrifice to that of Jesus Christ, my divine Saviour. I ask in His
name and through His infinite merits, patience in my trials, and perfect and
entire submission to all that comes to me by your good pleasure. Amen (by St Joseph Pignatelli)
The
idea of changing the world and converting it to Christ is certainly captivating
and unquestionably urgent in scope. Yet, accepting the will of God reveals that
the world can only be converted soul by soul, for the hearts of men, women and
children are the arenas where the contest for souls takes place and it begins
not out there but in here, in the heart of the individual. Salvation is
never of “all of us” but “each one of us”.
