Salesian Literature

Chapter 7  :  The love of God’s will declared by the commandments leads to love of the counsels

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A soul in love with God is so transformed as to become identified with God’s will rather than merely obedient to it.

 

That is why God, speaking through Isaiah (62:2-4), promises to the Christian Church: A new name shall be given thee by the Lord’s own lips, a name that will be engraved on the hearts of his faithful ones.  There follows a description of that name, which means (according to the Hebrew text) “my will in her” – as though indicating that Christians do not retain their own individual wills, which they renounce, but possess (as God’s children) a single master-will common to all, which inspires and guides the souls, hearts and wills of all the faithful.

 

Christians know no prouder title than “God’s will in them” – a will that reigns over all wills, transforming them into its own likeness, so that a Christian’s will and our Lord’s will become a single faculty.  The perfect expression of this was to be found in the primitive Church, where (as St. Luke says, Acts 4:32) there was one heart and soul in all the company of believers.  He was not thinking of the physical heart, or the soul that gives it life; he was referring to the heart imbued with charity, to the soul endowed with supernatural life.  The one heart and soul that all true Christians know is none other than God’s will.

 

When our love for God’s will is immense, we are not satisfied with doing all that God declares he wants us to do by his commandments; we also set ourselves to obey his counsels, which are given us for a more perfect keeping of those commandments to which they correspond (as St. Thomas says so well[1]).  Surely the man who gives up lawful delights is good at avoiding forbidden pleasures!  Surely the man who gives up his right to private property is far from coveting another’s possessions!  It is most unlikely that the man who submits himself to another man, in order to do God’s will, should ever prefer his own will to God’s.

 

Our Lord, during his life on earth, made known his will now by commandments, now by desires – as when he highly commanded chastity, poverty, obedience, complete submission, renunciation of self-will, widowhood, fasting, the habit of prayer.

 

In commending chastity to those whose hearts are large enough for it (cf. Mt. 19:12), he was speaking for all the other counsels too.  In response to this desire the most courageous Christians have entered the lists.  By overcoming all reluctance, all concupiscence, every difficulty, they have reached perfection.  They have kept strictly to their king’s desires, and so carried off the crown of glory.

 

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[1]  Summa Theologica, 2.2.q.189.a.1.ad.5.

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