Category Archives: Submission to God

Submission to God

The Path of Obedience

24 Tuesday Mar 2015

Posted by in Free Will, God's Will, Sermons, Submission to God

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Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent
March 22, 2015

On March 20, which was Friday of last week, I celebrated my fifth anniversary of ordination as a Catholic priest. And so I stand before you today, a priest, but not because I wanted to be, but because I was called by God to do so. You see, no one becomes a priest because they want to, but because they are called into it by God. Now, it is not that I don’t want to be a priest, I do, and I am very happy to be a Catholic priest serving here at Our Lady of the Atonement. (And may it please God to let me stay here for the rest of my life.) But this does not change the fact that I am here as a priest not because I decided to become one, but because God called me to do it – and I, in obedience, followed His calling. And it is this idea of obedience about which I want to speak with you today.

We tend to think of obedience as something negative – like it is an intrusion upon our freedom to do what we want to do. “Oh man, Mom told me to clean my room, so that means I can’t play video games.” This kind of thinking, though, betrays a wrong understanding of freedom. We tend to think in this country that we are free to do whatever we want, but that is not true, because to deliberately choose to do something that is wrong is to misuse our freedom. That is not the reason God gave us freedom. He gave us freedom in order to choose to do that which is good and morally right. In fact, it is necessary for us to be free in order to choose our ultimate good, which is God Himself. And it is in choosing God that obedience comes into play.

Before going on with our reflection on the positive nature of obedience, let us first reflect on its opposite: disobedience. It would be good for us to call to mind the first person that disobeyed God and that would be Lucifer. It was he who was the first to refuse to recognize God as his Creator. It was he who was first to refuse to return God’s love for him. It was he who was first to fail to be grateful to God for all the gifts he had been given. As a result, every act of disobedience thereafter is an emulation of Lucifer’s disobedience of God. And if his is the path that we choose by being disobedient to God in this life then God will let us have what we have chosen – eternal separation from Him as the only source of anything good.

In considering this hopefully obedience no longer sounds like such a bad thing. After all, the path of obedience is the path that Christ walked before us and it is the only path that leads us to Him. We are told today that Christ “learned obedience through what He suffered; and being made perfect He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.” Christ was obedient to the will of His Father by accepting the Cross and dying for us. And we must follow His example if we want to obtain the salvation that He won for us. Emulating Christ’s obedience is the only way to be saved. And He tells us this plainly in the Gospel today, “If any one serves me, he must follow me.” There is no other path open to us if we want reach our ultimate Goal.

Now certainly, by being obedient, we will have to give up certain things that we desire because they are in fact bad for us. And that can be hard to do. But, shouldn’t we want to give up things that are bad for us? Is the momentary pleasure we receive from such things really worth the price of our eternal soul? If we think critically and honestly about that question then the only reasonable answer would be no. We know that God made us and that the happiness that He wants for us is more important than any other thing we could possibly want or desire. All too often, though, we settle for something much less.

But, if we want to reach that which we truly desire, then we must follow the path of obedience that Christ walked before us. Yes, we know that such a path will lead us to suffering on this earth, but it does not end there. Christ was abused, beaten, and killed but that is not the end of the story. It is through the suffering and death of Jesus that the Resurrection came about and that the gates of Heaven were opened to all who truly believe in Him.

And so, we have two paths that are set before us: the path of obedience and the path of disobedience. We know who established each of these paths and we know where each path leads. But there is one thing that no one knows except you and that is this: which path will you choose?

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The Difference between Need and Want

05 Friday Dec 2014

Posted by in Eternal Life, Free Will, God's Will, Pope Francis, Salvation, Submission to God, Thought for the Day

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People…have become used to an image of God handed down to them as very conerned, even jealous, about receiving the honor and glory due him, as though he somehow needed this for his own sake. But this is a serious misunderstanding, both philosophically and religiously. God does not need anything from us to maintain his own happiness. His only wish is to share his own happiness with us as richly as possible. But on our part, for our own sake, we must honor and glorify him as the best way to turn ourselves toward him and render us open and attentive to receive his gifts.

The One and the Many, W. Norris Clarke, S.J. (p.238)

I will write only briefly in order to explain my title. As Fr. Clarke expresses so well above, God does not need us for His own happiness. But, out of His infinite love, He sincerely wants us to be with Him. And of course to be with God is what we were created for – it is our end, our goal. But in order to reach that goal we must turn away from our selves and turn towards Him. “We must honor and glorify him” and the only way to do that is by willingly doing as He has asked us to do. And what is that ultimately? We see the answer in the words spoken by God’s own Son, “not my will, but thine, be done.” (Luke 22:42)

The Finite leads to the Infinite

02 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by in Free Will, God's Will, Philosophy, Submission to God

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I am still attempting to finish my series of posts on ‘chance’ – if there is such a thing – but I am still thinking about how to end it. In the meantime, here is something I just read that is very thought provoking. Also, as we have just started Advent, the following can be subject good to consider. We should be at this time asking ourselves whether or not we live our lives according to the Truth or do we remain within a world of illusion and contradiction. If we do not ask ourselves these questions then we will not be ready when our Lord returns.

First a little background: he is here talking about mankind’s search for the infinite. In examining our own lives we can see this desire at work. We desire the infinite, but if we do not know where to find it then we try fulfill that desire with finite things of this world. What happens when we do this? We enjoy the novelty for a while and then tire of it, put it down, and move onto the next thing that catches our interest. But if we step back from this never ending process, instead of moving on to the next thing, we will see that there is no finite thing that will ever fulfill us. Only the infinite can do that. If we are honest then we have to admit the truth of this experience in our lives and can then recognize that it holds true for all mankind. But when we are confronted with the infinite – God – we can feel threatened because we want to be the masters of our own domain. (And this is connected to the fact that we are born into Original Sin.) Therefore, many people reject God because they want to be ‘free’ to pursue their own idea of happiness, thinking of God as nothing but the ‘fun police’ – only there to squash mankind’s happiness. As a result, those who reject God end up living their lives in a contradiction because they deny the very thing that they are seeking. With this result the following question must be asked: if there is no God then why do we have within us this desire for the infinite? If the finite is all there is and at the same time we desire the infinite, then we are find ourselves in an unintelligible universe. To this Fr. Clarke responds in the following manner.

It can be shown…that there is a lived contradiction between affirming theoretically that the universe or myself is unintelligible and continuing to live and use my mind as though it were intelligible–which we cannot help but do. Thus it is finally up to each one of us either to accept his or her infinite-oriented nature as meaningful and revelatory of the real or as an opaque, illusory surd. But what good reason can one have for choosing darkness over light, illusion over meaning, for not choosing the light? Only if the darkness is more intelligible? But this does not make sense! Why not then accept my nature as a meaningful gift, pointing the way to what is, rather than what is not?

The One and the Many, W. Norris Clarke, S.J., p. 228

You cannot have it both ways: either there is a God, which gives sense to our desire for the infinite; or there is not a God, which makes the desire we find within us into non-sense.

God’s Will and Man’s Prayer

30 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by in Definitions, Free Will, God's Will, Liturgy of the Hours, Prayer, Submission to God, The Fall

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The quote below is from the Office of Readings appointed for Friday, November 28, 2014. The first line and how he connects it to prayer is what really caught my attention.

Our obligation is to do God’s will, and not our own. We must remember this if the prayer that our Lord commanded us to say daily is to have any meaning on our lips. How unreasonable it is to pray that God’s will be done, and then not promptly obey it when he calls us from this world! Instead we struggle and resist like self-willed slaves and are brought into the Lord’s presence with sorrow and lamentation, not freely consenting to our departure, but constrained by necessity. And yet we expect to be rewarded with heavenly honours by him to whom we come against our will! Why then do we pray for the kingdom of heaven to come if this earthly bondage pleases us? What is the point of praying so often for its early arrival if we would rather serve the devil here than reign with Christ.

From the Treatise of St Cyprian on Mortality

Specifically, St. Cyprian is here referring to the Lord’s Prayer and the petition within it that states, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” He is trying to show how absurd it is to pray this prayer daily and yet to try to resist God who is constantly calling us to Himself. But this passage has much broader implications.

First of all, let us consider mankind’s obligation of doing God’s will and not our own. Let us go back to the beginning before Adam and Eve turned against God. At the moment of their creation Adam and Eve were absolutely perfect, they were in a state of Original Justice. The Catechism describes Original Justice in the following way:

As long as (mankind) remained in the divine intimacy, man would not have to suffer or die. The inner harmony of the human person, the harmony between man and woman, and finally the harmony between the first couple and all creation comprised the state called ‘original justice.’

CCC §376 (for more information see CCC §374-384)

In addition, in §377 it goes on to say that mankind’s mastery over the world was most importantly his mastery of self.

The first man was unimpaired and ordered in his whole being because he was free from the triple concupiscence that subjugates him to the pleasures of the senses, covetousness for earthly goods, and self-assertion, contrary to the dictates of reason.

In short, this means that man’s will was perfectly aligned to the will of God who had created him. This is how God had designed it to be and intended it to stay. But then, sin entered into God’s perfect creation through the disobedience of Adam and Eve. What the sin was does not matter as much as the fact that Adam and Eve, who had been made in God’s image, did sin. What this means is that instead of keeping their wills in alignment with the will of God, they choose to go their own way, trying to assert their own wills above the will of the One who had created them. They, being finite, were trying to tell the infinite where to get off, which is an absolute absurdity.

Now, how does this fit with our prayer to God? When considering our prayers, and that maybe we are not ‘getting what we ask for’, we must remember that prayer is not primarily about getting what we want. Perhaps this is the reason that people do not pray as they ought to, because they don’t see the results they want and, therefore, think that it doesn’t work. But we need to remember that prayer is not about imposing our will on God but about submitting our will to His. As St. James tells us, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly.” (James 4:3a, RSV-CE)

What it all really comes down to is this: for anything to work properly in our lives, whether it be prayer or anything else, then our lives must be properly ordered. And what is the proper order for our lives? It begins by realizing that our wills are subordinate to the will of God and then, through the grace of Christ, fulfilling our obligation to God by subordinating our wills to His.

Christ the King

25 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by in Loving our Neighbor, Salvation, Sermons, Submission to God, Update

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(Editorial note: the comment below by Dr. Delaney is worth noting and, as he suggests, would have fit into my sermon very well. In addition, it was pointed out by one of the deacons at the parish that we in America do not actually have a true democracy but instead a democratic republic. Both of these mistakes find their origin in my own ignorance, which can be attributed to my always taking the easy way out in my studies earlier in my life. I am now trying to remedy that problem. I have left the sermon as is, though, because this is how I delivered it.)

Sermon for Christ the King Sunday

November 23, 2014

What is a king? This is the question posed to us by our celebration today. But secondly, and more importantly, what does it mean for Christ to be our King? Regarding the first question, in an absolute monarchy, the king is one who exercises complete political power over a specific group of people. And if these people are good subjects then they will obey the king’s decisions and follow where he leads. But, of course, this kind of monarchy only works if the king is good and has the good of his subjects always in mind. And this is why earthly kingdoms which have absolute monarchies do not work – because the concerns of an earthly king often devolves into either a concern for what is good for himself or other petty concerns that hurt his subjects. Because of this, when this country was founded, we chose not to have a king, but instead established a democratic system with elected officials. And even though at this time many of our elected officials act more like dictators rather than ordinary citizens who have been elected to represent the people, nevertheless, our choice of government seems to be the best model for a planet of fallen and sinful people. We are all sinful and selfish and therefore, no single one of us should have absolute power over the rest.

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The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

21 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by in Free Will, God's Will, Saints, Submission to God

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No time to write anything original today. Therefore I commend to you a wonderful article from EWTN found here. The thing that really caught my attention was the following:

By the consecration which the Blessed Virgin made of herself to God in the first use which she made of her reason, we are admonished of the most important and strict obligation which all persons lie under, of an early dedication of themselves to the divine love and service.