Rick and Monica Savaiano of The Little Way bookstore in Crystal Lake gifted me with a book they both called “the best book” they had ever read: “Into Your Hands, Father — Abandoning Ourselves to the God Who Loves Us,” by Carmelite Father Wilfrid Stinissen.
It is a deceptively-small book that packs in things that are hugely tough to ponder. Accepting God’s will, doing God’s will and, finally, becoming God’s instrument, is heavy-duty stuff.
The first step of accepting God’s will includes developing a somewhat-passive perspective that may be incredibly hard for active, can-do people to embrace.
Early on, the author comes up with: “For every one of us there is a chalice that the Father offers us to drink. We have difficulty recognizing it as coming from Him, since a great deal of its contents come from other people.”
So often, many of the difficulties in life seem to perfectly fit us somehow, although that may only be evident in hindsight. Completing good-but-difficult tasks to make the world a better place, facing our own physical limitations and the like can strengthen our faith and help us realize our need for God, for example. But we often choose such things, or at least can glimpse that they come from God. I think of a Green Bay native who never would have become a priest if he had been physically able to become a linebacker for the Packers. We can see the plan of God in that childhood dream derailed.
But it is extra tough to accept that “other people” are allowed to pour evil contents into our cups. Do we really have to drink such sludge and accept it as God’s will for us?
The harder we work at this thought that the evil done to us is, or perhaps has become, God’s will for us, the more that some of the more perplexing Scripture passages come to mind. Consider Jesus’ command to love our enemies … and to turn the other cheek … and to go the extra mile … and to not seek revenge.
As she speaks of the love we must have for those who work against us, St. Teresa of Avila goes as far as to say that we can develop a greater love for our enemies than for our friends, once we realize we’ve benefited from their distressing actions.
The trials such people inflict may be necessary for us to become saints, Father Stinissen says.
He also notes this point from St. Augustine: “Nothing happens that the Almighty does not will should happen, either by permitting it or by Himself doing it,” and adds, “To let something happen is also a decision of God.”
There are, happily, times when God steps in. If we look around carefully, we’ll see plenty of God’s active goodness at work, at times miraculously, and otherwise done through those who seek to serve Him. We cannot give God enough credit for the good things that happen in the world.
But evil appears to win some battles, and that’s when it helps to trust that God is mightier and will accomplish His purpose through it. Father Stinissen notes that doers of evil unintentionally serve God’s purpose. God’s goodness simply is far greater than the darkness they inflict.
Even so, at times horrible, hate-filled actions appear only to destroy the good. At those times, let us flee to our amazing savior whom we celebrate this season.
Recall His hours in the garden, when Jesus asked His Father, “Take this cup away from me, but not what I will but what you will.” Jesus’ cup/chalice was filled to overflowing with trials that originated in other people — some merely clueless, others truly evil. Societal sins provided the means of Jesus’ torturous demise, although the Romans were mostly-indifferent to the charges levelled at Him.
Jesus submitted to all of it, allowing it to happen, letting evil have its day. Three days later, He rose from the dead.
God brought forth goodness that would not have come about without the cup — filled as it was with contents that came from other people.