Salesian Views on

Will of God

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Will of God

 

Declared Will of God

 

Union of Man’s will with God’s Declared Will

Treatise on the Love of God, 8

 

God’s Declared Will

Spiritual Conferences, Vol.1, 2. God’s declared will has four parts: His Commandments, His Counsels, the Commandments of the Church, His Inspirations.  

 

How we are to comply with God’s declared will

Treatise on the Love of God, 8:3. Christian doctrine clearly sets forth the truths God wants us to believe, the blessings he means us to hope for, the punishments he intends us to fear, the things he would like us to love, the commandments he means us to keep and the counsels he wishes us to follow. 

 

Our wills compliant with God’s will to save us

Treatise on the Love of God, 8:4. God has revealed in so many ways, by so many means, that he intends us all to be saved, no human being can be unaware of the fact. 

 

God’s will declared in the Counsels

Treatise on the Love of God, 8:6. A command reveals a definite intention on the part of the person giving the order; a counsel betrays only a desire.  A command obliges us; a counsel merely invites.  A commandment renders those who break it blameworthy; a counsel simply renders those who fail to follow it less worthy of praise. 

 

God’s will declared through inspirations

Treatise on the Love of God, 8:10. The sun’s rays give both light and warmth together.  Inspiration is a ray of grace bringing light and warmth to our hearts: light to show us what is good; warmth to give us energy to go after it.  The Holy Spirit is infinite light; he is the living breath we call inspiration.

 

The third proof of inspiration – obedience to the church and superiors

Treatise on the Love of God, 8:13. Peace of soul and patience are inseparably bound up with humility.  However, I do not call obsequious words and gestures, or bowings and scrapings, humility; especially when they are done, as frequently happens, with no inner conviction of self-abasement, no due regard for one’s neighbour.

 

A short method of knowing God’s Declared Will

Treatise on the Love of God, 8:14. God’s will is made known to us, says St. Basil, by what he disposes, what he commands.  This calls for no deliberation on our part; we simply carry out God’s orders.  In everything else, however, we are perfectly free to make our own choice of what seems good – though it is not a question of doing everything that is permissible, but only such things as are suitable.

 

 

Permissive Will of god

 

Union of Man’s will with God’s Permissive Will

Treatise on the Love of God, 9

 

God’s Permissive Will

Spiritual Conferences, Vol.1, 2. We have to find this will in all the events, I mean, in all that happens to us: in sickness, in death, in trouble, in consolation, in failure and in success, in short, in all that is unexpected. 

 

The will of God’s good pleasure, “Permissive Will”

Treatise on the Love of God, 9:1. Sin excepted, nothing happens but by God’s will – by a positive or permissive will which no one can obstruct, which is known only by its results.  These events, when they occur, show us that God has willed and planned them.

 

Permissive Will seen especially in Trials and Difficulties

Treatise on the Love of God, 9:2. There is nothing attractive about trials in themselves; only when seen as coming form providence, enjoined by God’s will, are they infinitely lovable.  On the ground Moses’ staff was a frightful serpent; in his hand it was a miraculous wand.

 

Permissive Will accepted through resignation or “deference”

Treatise on the Love of God, 9:3. Love of the cross leads us to go out of our way to meet unpleasant things – fasting, vigils, hair shirts, and other bodily mortifications; it makes us give up pleasures, honours, riches.  God finds the love behind these practices most attractive.

 

Embracing the Will of God’s good pleasure or “Disinterested Love”

Treatise on the Love of God, 9:4. Deference means that we prefer God’s will to all else, though we know a great attraction to many other things.  Disinterestedness is a stage higher – it means that we are lovingly attracted to a thing only because we see God’s will in it; nothing else interests the unencumbered heart, when God’s will makes itself felt.

 

Disinterested love extends to everything

Treatise on the Love of God, 9:5.  Disinterestedness is to be shown in natural things, such as health, sickness, beauty, plainness, weakness, strength; in social life, such as honours, rank, or wealth; in the ebb and flow of the spiritual life, such as dryness, encouragement, enthusiasm, boredom; in activity, in suffering – in a word, whatever happens.

 

Disinterested love in what concerns God’s service

Treatise on the Love of God, 9:6. Things that happen are the almost exclusive means of recognizing God’s positive or permissive will.  As long as we are unaware of what God wants here and now, we must cling as closely as possible to his declared will, which has been revealed to us.

 

Disinterestedness to be shown over growth in virtue

Treatise on the Love of God, 9:7. God has laid upon us the obligation of doing all we can to acquire virtue, so let us overlook nothing hat may ensure success.  But after we have planed and watered, let us be aware that it is God who gives the increase to our good tendencies and habits.

 

How we are to unite our wills with God’s in allowing sin

Treatise on the Love of God, 9:8. God knows an utter hatred of sin; yet, in his great wisdom, he permits it.  He does so to allow rational creatures to act in accord with their natures; also to make those who are good more praiseworthy for doing no wrong, when wrong lay in their power.

 

Disinterested Love exercised in prayer

Treatise on the Love of God, 9:9. One of the finest musicians this world has known, a marvellous lute player, in a short time went stone deaf.  He still continued to sing, however, and to finger his lute with wondrous delicacy, for deafness did not deprive him of his long-accustomed skill.

 

A way of knowing if we change in charity

Treatise on the Love of God, 9:10. You will recognize it all right, Theotimus.  If the mystic nightingale sings to please God, it will sing the song it knows God likes; but if it sings to please itself, it will sing what takes its own fancy, what it thinks will give the self the most pleasure.

 

Bewilderment due to ignorance of whether or not we are pleasing God

Treatise on the Love of God, 9:11. The musician I mentioned found no satisfaction in singing, after he became dear, except when he was aware that his prince was listening and enjoying it.  Blessed indeed is the heart that loves God for the sole pleasure of pleasing God!

 

The passing over of the Will

Treatise on the Love of God, 9:12. What happens when a man is weighed down by inner trials?  Though he is quite capable of believing in, hoping in, and loving God; though he actually does so – yet he is too weak to be aware of it.  So powerfully does his distress engross and overwhelm him, he cannot come to himself, to see what he is about.

 

Dead to self, the will is alive only to God

Treatise on the Love of God, 9:13. We have a neat way of referring to death as a passing, and to the dead as the departed.  It simply means that for men death is a passing from one life to another; to die is but to depart from the limitations of mortality and achieve immortality.

 

Further light on the death of the will

Treatise on the Love of God, 9:14. It is quite likely that the blessed Virgin, our Lady, found such happiness cradling her dear little Jesus in her arms that her contentment proved a barrier to weariness, or at least alleviated it.  If she let him toddle beside her, holding him by the hand, it did not mean that she preferred this to feeling his arms around her neck; she was merely training him to walk by himself.

 

How best to deal with the troubles of life, once we have achieved disinterestedness and death to self-will

Treatise on the Love of God, 9:15. Once upon a time, a famous surgeon’s daughter fell into a fever that lasted a long time.  Aware of her father’s deep affection for her, she remarked to one of her friends: “I am in great pain, but it never occurs to me to take any medicine; after all, I don’t know what would be needed to cure me.

 

God’s Will strips … and re-clothes

Treatise on the Love of God, 9:16. Let us picture to ourselves the gentle Jesus in Pilate’s house … There, for love of us, he was divested of his garments one by one at the hands of soldiers, the agents of his death.  Not content with that, they tore his skin from him with cudgel-blows and whips.  Later his soul was divested of his body, his body bereft of life, by the death he suffered on the cross.

 

Doing God’s will

Spiritual Conferences, Vol.1, 2: What is and in what consists the perfect determination to know and to follow God’s will in all things?  And can we find it and follow it in the will of the Superiors or inferiors, which we see clearly proceeding from their natural and habitual tendencies?

 

Obeying God’s will in all things

Spiritual Conferences, Vol.1, 2: The counsel to renounce oneself (Mt. 16:24; Lk. 9:23) is nothing else than to abandon one’s own will at every opportunity, one’s own personal judgement, in order to follow God’s will, and to make ourselves available to all and in everything, always with the exception of actions by which we would offend God.

 

Doing God’s will by doing my neighbour’s will

Spiritual Conferences, Vol.1, 2: It is precisely here that God’s goodness wants us to earn the reward of obedience.  For, if we always understood that it was right to give us an order, or to ask us to do a certain thing, we would not have much merit in obeying.  In fact, we would have no great dislike because surely our whole heart would gladly accept it.

 

By way of Transition  (Memo on Christian Perfection)

Letter to Madame de Brûlart. Everyone is obliged to strive for the perfection of Christian life, because Our Lord commands that we be perfect and St. Paul says the same (Mt. 5:48; 2 Cor. 13:11).  Perfection of Christian life consists in conforming our wills to that of our good God, who is the sovereign standard and norm for all actions.

 

Letter to Madame de Brûlart: There are some matters in which it is clear what God’s will is, as in what concerns the commandments or the duties of one’s vocation.  That is why we must always seek to carry out well what God expects of all Christians, as well as what our own vocation requires of us in particular. 

 

Letter to a Wife and Mother, 9: I don’t like people who care for nothing and remain unmoved by anything that happens.  They do so only form a lack of energy or character, or because of contempt for good as well as evil.  But those people who remain indifferent because they have given themselves over entirely to the will of God should thank him for this, for it is a great gift.

 

Letter to a Wife and Mother, 17: Now, you must always persevere in firmly placing all your trust in our Lord in the troublesome business you have in hand.  It will give you a fine opportunity of laying a good foundation of submission to God’s will and peace of soul. 

 

Letters of Spiritual Direction, Theme II: The goodness of God – the sense of that goodness permeating all of creation, of the dynamic thrust in the centre of created reality that inclines toward its Creator – is basic to the Salesian spirit.  Humankind is created to know and love God and to do God’s will.  But the discernment of and response to the will is not always a simple matter.

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