“What is the Will of God
for My Life?”
This perennial question, wrought from
the depths of perplexity and suffering in the human soul, cannot be
answered by man. It must be answered by God.
In fact, it is answered by God.
Another way of stating the question is really this: “Why did God
create me?”
It is no mere coincidence that this is the very first question asked
in the Baltimore Catechism used by generations of Catholics
throughout America and which had a clear-cut Question and Answer
format. The answers were straight-forward, simply stated, and did
not diffuse into unrelated issues, allowing the student to focus on
the answer, and yes, encouraging them to memorize it, knowing full
well that the answer to the question will serve the student later in
life when confronting some issue about God or what Holy Mother
Church teaches.
There is nothing wanting, nothing evil, and nothing untoward in
memorizing the truth. Students of geometry have done it from time
immemorial, and no one disdains either the question, “What is a
triangle?”, or the answer, “A triangle is a polygon with 3 sides,
the sum of whose internal angles equal 180 degrees.” It is simply
the case. No matter how much you may wish that it were otherwise and
that a triangle had 4 sides with 5 internal angles equal to a sum of
360 degrees … and one is certainly free to choose to believe this …
the objective nature of a triangle is quite different. We may not
like it, but it nevertheless remains so, however much we choose to
believe otherwise.
To wit, the Baltimore Catechism puts the question this way:
Question: Why did God create
me?”
Answer: God created me to know
Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this life, and to be happy
with Him forever in Heaven.
Our present question, however, is less general and far more
specific: “For what purpose, for what reason, did God create me? In
creating me, what does He will for me, what was and is His will for
my life — why did He create me and what does He want me to do?”
Can we answer this question in general terms? Yes. “God created you
to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this life, and to be
happy with Him forever in Heaven. In this lies your happiness and
the meaning of your life. This why you were created (“to know Him”).
This is what you must do (“To love Him and to serve Him”). And this
why you should do this (“to be happy with Him forever in Heaven”).
Is not all of this true? Why, then, would we hesitate in stating it?
It may not please the questioner any more than a triangle having 3
sides may not please the aspiring but misguided geometer. But it is
true, no less, and we may state it with absolute certainty. For all
our hubris, it is not ours to define the truth or to articulate it
to our liking or the liking of another. Ours is to recognize the
truth, and if questioned relative to it, to state it. In the end, we
cannot give someone a round stick to fit into a triangular hole
simply because the idea pleases him ... or us.
Can we, however, answer this question relative to particular and
clearly distinguishable circumstances? “What does God wish me to do
in this matter?” Note that the person is not asking what you think
he ought to do, but what God would have him do.
Can you answer this? Or do you think yourself presumptuous in
answering for God? You can answer this and you are not being
presumptuous in answering for God. In fact, it is what He expects of
you (“to serve Him”)!
Presumably, you know the Scriptures. You know the 10 Commandments.
You know the Sermon on the Mount. You know what Jesus Christ
actually said and what He explicitly and clearly expects of us:
“So, what then is the Will of God
for my life? What is God now asking me to do?”
-
It is to “renounce yourself
daily, to take up your Cross, and to follow after Him.”
-
It is to do as He has done (“exemplum
dedit vobis” — “I give you an example”)
-
It is to be perfect as your
Heavenly Father is perfect”.
-
It is to forgive perfectly ...
as He Himself has forgiven you.
-
It is to be merciful, just as
God has shown you mercy.
-
It is to give unstintingly …
just as He has given to you.
-
It is to love others not simply
as you love yourself, but as Christ has loved you.
-
It is to make disciples of all
nations (yes, that means evangelizing ... by your words,
and above above all, by your example). Christ
commanded this!
It is to lose your life for His
sake. Literally. To die to yourself, and if necessary, to die
for Him, for His Name, for His Church, and in the face of wanton
persecution.
In other words, all that Christ has taught us! All
that His Holy Church teaches us! This is what God
is now asking you to do.
We have heard the WORD OF GOD
HIMSELF! We know what
He said! We know what He expects of us! He has taught
us, told us, shown us by His own example — very clearly what
His will is.
For any Catholic to claim, “I do not know what God’s will for me
is in this life” is a terrible, terrible indictment of the
appalling failure of the Church to teach Her own children what
Christ, both by word and example, commanded Her to teach.
We know what God would have us do, what God’s will for us is, in
nearly every venue of human life — by appealing to His word
and His example.
Freedom and Obedience do not Conflict
God, wishing to endow us with every
perfection, also gives us the beautiful gift of freedom! As with our
First Parents in the Garden, we are free, free to do what we will
— God only asks that we be attentive to Him, to what He has told
us, taught us, shown us, so that we will not be deceived by the evil
one and unwittingly choose what will bring us to sorrow and death.
That is why His yoke is gentle, and His burden light. We are free to
do all that brings us happiness … but we only find happiness through
obedience to God — to Whom alone all ends are known.
But we can obey only what we know, and will only know what we are
taught.
This has been the great failure of the Church for the past 50 years:
the failure to teach us what God would have us do … rather than what
is currently “correct” by the standards of the world with a thin
veneer of Christianity to anoint it. It is a systematic failure much
in the form of the triangle we invoked earlier, with the Bishop at
the apex, indifferent to his primary responsibility as “Teacher of
the Faith” and either tolerant or ignorant of whatever is taught in
his diocese, to a broadening base of administrators in collusion
with deeply entrenched and highly profitable publishers of glossy
and insipid “catechisms” and “workbooks”… that are mandatory for
each student to “buy”, and which remain largely unopened. (A
mandatory new edition every year to guarantee continued and
uninterrupted sales and profits …).
The Religious Education Teachers, of course, constitute the broad
base of this triangle, many, if not most of whom, are themselves
largely clueless about Catholic Doctrine and teach what is most
comfortable to them in the classroom, even if it does not square
with the Faith. Pastors, by and large, do not visit classrooms, and
never question what is being taught within them.
Is it really any wonder that many Catholics can ask in good earnest,
“What is the will of God for me? Can you tell me, because no one
ever has? Indeed, can anyone?” That they genuinely do not know is
not their fault. They have never been taught. It is a low priority
on the bishop’s, the pastor’s, the priest’s — and yes, the
parents' — agenda. There are more important things to be done …
and after all, as long as there are warm bodies to "teach", the
pretense of “Religious Education” will continue as it has for 50
years, churning out proud “graduates” for their Confirmation in a
Faith never taught them and subsequently about which they know
nothing. In the end, it is why the the question itself — "What is
the will of God for my life?" — is, and is likely to remain,
perennial.
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