Sunday after Ascension 29 May 2022 Battle of wills
The Apostles were waiting for something from Heaven; they did not quite know what was coming. We now know it was the Holy Spirit.
Much of our experience in dealing with the Divine is like that. We do not know what will happen next, but we trust it will be something good, if requested in faith.
We know that God likes to surprise us favourably, and we can fit in with that. We are like children being sent to bed with the promise that there will be presents in the morning!
We do not let the passing of time decrease our faith. There is no reason why it should, but we see that it does affect many people. They just get tired of waiting and stop asking for miracles. We give up too easily, generally.
God wants us to learn trusting submission to His holy will. We want some things so much that we can push against God, seeing Him more as an adversary than a friend. This leads to distortions.
It means we put our trust in certain outcomes rather than in God Himself. God wants certain things, so do I. And mine are more important!
Our Lady and the apostles were praying for the Holy Spirit to come. This coming was not just an external event - something happening outside of ourselves, that we can watch like a spectator.
It was necessary also that they would pray for an interior transformation.
This would be a deep transformation, more than minimal Catholicism. More than Mass on Sundays!
God wants His disciples to be like Himself; that was always the main aim.
The Holy Spirit was the transforming agent, changing from within those who receive Him.
When we have been transformed enough we will prefer God's will to our own. That is a major breakthrough. Not my will, but Thine (Lk 22,42)
We pray to know His will and to embrace it. Whatever He asks of us He will give the necessary grace for us to put it into effect.
Even when we want the same things as God does, His plans would have a lot more depth. He will grant us what we ask but at a deeper level than we were asking.
We don’t know all the complexities of people and situations. There are lots of subtleties that we could not know: for example, that God may be calling a particular person to a particular task.
We are just a small cog in a very large machine. However, as with machines, every part is necessary, and so are we, when God calls us.
We learn what to want, and with real desire. This is what the apostles had to learn .
If we think God is inactive – never! It is human resistance to His will that causes delay to prayers being answered. Imagine how much more smoothly things would run if most people prayed as they did in the Upper Room.
We pray for the Holy Spirit to come on the whole Church. We see how difficult this is if most people are locked in dispute over His holy will. There is much to overcome before the whole process can work as it should.
If we cannot get the whole world right, nor the whole Church, we can work on our own limitations. Come Holy Spirt and transform me, not just someone else, but me too.
God's will might bring us more than we wanted, but once we have had time to absorb it we will see how right it all is.
The more we pray and believe, the more God can achieve in our midst. Let us ask and ask again, Come Holy Spirit!
No comments:
Post a Comment