Salesian Literature

Chapter 15  :  How best to deal with the troubles of life, once we have achieved disinterestedness and death to self-will

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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.  I could want one thing, when I ought to have another. Isn’t it better for me to leave all that to my father?  He knows; he can also do and desire all that my health requires.  It would be a mistake for me to think of doing anything; he is sufficiently concerned for me.  It would be a mistake for me to decide on something; he will make the decisions that are best for me.  I’m simply going to wait until he decides to do what he thinks fit; I shall merely look up at him when he comes to see me, to show him that I love and trust him.”

 

Why become involved in the pros and cons of worldly events, of things that happen? You are ignorant of what you ought to wish for; God will make plans enough for you without the need for you to put yourself to the trouble.  Await, your soul at peace, the outcome of God’s permissive will.  Be satisfied with what he wants; it is never anything but good.  This was what he enjoined, after all, on his beloved St. Catherine of Siena: “Think of me,” he told her, “and I shall take thought for you.”

 

So it seems to me that a man who is disinterested, who has no will of his own, but leaves God to decide as he pleases, should be simply said to keep his will on the alert, ready for anything.

 

Anticipation is not constructive or active; it is merely holding oneself in readiness for something to happen.  Such alertness of soul, remember, is clear voluntary, yet it is not an action; it is simply a readiness to take what comes.  Once events occur and are accepted, this anticipation is transformed into consent or compliance; before they happen, however, the soul in point of fact is simply on the alert, attentive, equally prepared for anything and everything that God’s will disposes.

 

Notice, if you will, that the Saviour was not satisfied with a prayer of deference to his Father’s will in the garden of Olives; he not only let himself be taken, manhandled, pushed around by his executioners through a wonderful surrender of his body and his life into their hands, but he also placed his soul and his will – through a most perfect disinterestedness – in the hands of his eternal Father.

 

Although he cried out: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (Mt. 27:46) – this was to bring home to us the reality of the bitterness of his spiritual sufferings, and not to run counter to his attitude of disinterested love.  In fact he shortly made this quite clear as he crowned life and passion with the matchless phrase: Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit (Lk. 23:46).

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