Not My Will, but Yours

I regret having regulated my life upon my own plans, my plans of fidelity and Christian sanctification, and not simply upon the plan which the Savior unfolds before every one of us. I believe I shall be able to explain myself in a few words, and that every child of God will understand me.

We are prone to make to ourselves a certain ideal of the Christian life, of Christian activity, and of the Christian ministry, and to attach to this ideal certain plans and certain methods, in such a way that we are not contented if we do not attain to the realization of them; and thus it behooves us to make the best possible plans, and to seek for the best possible method of carrying them out. All this is well, but beneath it all there is a fault; it is the me, the hidden me, which is rooted at the bottom of the heart, and which is seen in all our best and purest works. Whereas that which I would do would be to take the plan of my life and of my daily conduct, not from my own ideas and sentiments, but from the commandments of God, in his inward witness, in the conduct of his spirit, and in the external directions which he gives to our lives.

You will understand entirely my meaning in regard to the way in which I would regulate my life, if you will consider the manner in which our Savior guided his. We do not find in the life of Jesus those plans and methods which have so much occupied many good people, and often have tormented them so much, and taken up time that might have been better spent. But what do we find? We find a man (I am looking at him now as the Son of Man) who proposes to himself nothing but to accomplish the mission of his Father, and who has no other plan than to enter into the plan of his Father, so that his eyes fixed upon him. He is only occupied in listening to his voice to follow him, and in discerning his will to execute it. The good works of Jesus Christ are all given to him one after the other, placed before him on his road by the hand of God, and follow each other so easily, spring so naturally one from the other, that they are never confused and entangled, even in the busiest days of his ministry. In one day – for example, such an one as we have described to us in the ninth chapter of Matthew, where he calls to the ministry one of his apostles, heals the sick, revives the dead, and on his way delivers a woman from the malady of years, without counting the other benefits which he diffuses on all sides in his route – there is not an instance of embarrassment or hesitation, neither in the manner of doing his works, neither in the time given to each one of them, because Jesus Christ follows simply the plan of God, and God assumes the direction of him. When there is this perfect accord with the will of God, there is, on God’s part, a perfect light to conduct us. Thus is realized a beautiful and deep thought of the Holy Spirit: “We are created in Christ Jesus for good works, that God has prepared beforehand for us to walk in.” Where the good works are presented to us, not by a road that we have to make for ourselves, but by one which God has made for us, and in which we have nothing to do but to walk. It is the highway of God, it is not our own. We have nothing to do but to follow this road, and we are constantly doing the will of God.

Camille Pissarro, Sente de la Ravinière à Osny, oil on canvas, 1883.

If I have been able to make you understand, in these few words, what it is I would have you do, and what I should do myself if life were spared to me, it will be easy to show you what advantages this conformity to the divine will offers, above the carrying out of any personal plans whatever. It is not, however, my intention to discourage such plans – plans that we should make as perfect as possible. I believe that the infirmity of our nature is the better for this support, provided always that our personal plans are in continual subjection to the one thought of following only the will of God.

And now, to pause on two or three principal thoughts of the theme: this path of which Christ gives us the example, is first of all a condition of holiness. What is sin, taken in its inmost essence. It is the pursuit of self, the confidence in self, one’s own will, one’s own judgment, one’s own glory, and all that pertains to one’s self personally. Thus the desire to do well, and to do even the will of God, if built on plans and project formed in ourselves, has inevitably a root of sin somewhere in it; while, on the contrary, the essence of holiness being the union of our will to the divine will, it is when we have no plan but the plan of God, and no will but the will of God, that we are in a state of true holiness – a holiness that will not only have an outward beauty, but an inward strength, “holy even as he is holy.” The holiness of Christ follows and depends upon the principle that I have just laid down – constant abandonment to the will of God, manifested within by the testimony of his Spirit, without, by the declarations of his word and by the signs of his providence. Christ is holy because he only wills what God wills, because he seeks not his own glory, but his that sent him; there lay the power of his holiness. This conformity to the divine plan is then a condition of true holiness.

It is at the same time a condition of activity. One loses a vast amount of time when one seeks one’s own way, even for good. How easily we deceive ourselves and give ourselves up to reflections and considerations infinite. And how many people have acknowledged, at the end of their career, that no inconsiderable portion of their lives has been employed in forming plans, that might have been better spent in the work of the passing moment, and for the interest of others. Let us see what activity the plan of Christ exhibits, from which I have just quoted. In the ninth chapter of Matthew and elsewhere, good works are scattered with a bountiful hand, good works upon good works; there is no limit to the activity founded upon this complete accord with the divine will; the action of humans becomes then a divine action, and the life becomes a divine life in the bosom of that humanity which then accomplishes something, as by the power of God. We can have no idea what we should be able to do if we were completely lost in this accord with God; if we sought no will but his, if not a word of our mouths, not a beat of our hearts, not a thought of our minds, not a movement of our souls or bodies, but were turned to him, obediently, in the spirit of Samuel: “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.”

There are men who have shown what humans can do – a Luther, a Calvin, a Saint Paul, a Moses – these men have shown what a person can do who only seeks the will of God. Jesus Christ has done much more, because in him alone the conformity of his will with the divine was perfect. It is then a condition of activity, and an activity almost without limit; though there is a limit, because God does not ask of his creatures more than they are able to perform.

Finally, it is a condition of peace. There is no peace for the man who takes himself for his starting point. There is always room to fear that he is deceiving himself; he is troubled, and often in error, because the human will and human interests are subject to many errors; he has no rest, he excites himself; he torments himself, and inspires with deep compassion those who, seeing the strong desire that he has to glorify God, see at the same time the accumulation of obstacles that he places in his path by his want of simplicity while, on the other hand, when we look to God alone, we cast all our burden upon him, and he sustains us.

And more. If my projects emanate from myself, they may be impracticable. Perhaps I would follow some career of which I cannot bear the expense; or I would be a painter, and my sight fails me; a surgeon, but my hand lacks steadiness; then is my career spoiled, and I am inconsolable. But there is no possibility of a spoiled career, if my projects are made according to God’s plan for me. For then this very impossibility that I find in doing what I had at first proposed, proves to me that it is not that to which God calls me, and the infirmities even that stop me are so many lights by which God reveals my true work to me. If we act in this spirit (I say it with reverence), our work is more God’s affair than ours, his work and not our work; and the activity, the personal exertion which he always demands of us, consists only in a faithful and unquestioning obedience. In that we shall find deep peace; God cannot mislead us.

Often we are agitated by the thought that we are not doing enough, or that we are not doing the work that God has given us to do. I remember particularly how much, during the first weeks that followed the final decision of my physicians, I was troubled by the thought that my work was not done. By the grace of God I have been delivered from such thoughts; I have learned that it is not a question of my work, but of God’s; and I am thankful that by the very sufferings and afflictions that he has sent me, and by the hope of eternal life to follow them, the good Lord has brought me to the exercise of another ministry, probably more important than the one which I proposed to myself, and at all events more sure, because coming to me more directly from the hand of God, which constrains me mercifully to walk in this path for his service and glory.

It is then that we can say with the dying Christ: “I have finished the work that Thou hast given me to do.” How was he enabled to say that? Because he only sought to do the work of God, and God took him away as one gathers the ripe fruit, when his mission was accomplished. And for ourselves, also, let us only seek to do the work that the Father has given us to do, and to put ourselves entirely in his hands. And we also, if we are faithful, shall not be taken away till our work is done. To God alone it belongs to decide when the work which he has given us to do is finished. It may be very imperfect, very incomplete to the human eyes; but still the Savior will not permit, if we have been true to him, that our lives pass without leaving a trace upon the earth; he will not take us away till our work is completed in his sight, and till we can say before our Lord, in a spirit of humility: “I have finished the work Thou hast given me to do.”

There is great peace in seeking one’s plans only from God, and in following it to the renunciation of one’s own; and there is no peace elsewhere.

Thus, let us study to seek our plans nowhere but from God, both those who are humbled and recalled, and those who live to grow in grace. Let us study in this spirit to follow Christ in his Gethsemane, and to keep our eyes fixed constantly upon the will of the Father. It will be for us, as it was for Christ, a condition of holiness, a condition of activity, and a condition of perfect peace. It is this peace which I would ask for you. And I should be very happy if I might hope that these few words would incite those who have still before them time, life, strength, to use them so faithfully and so simply, to glorify God after the example of the Savior, that they may say in their turn: “I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do,” and that they may pass the time of their earthly life in peace, waiting till they shall be called from this world to the Father, by the grace of the Savior, by the power and virtue of the Holy Spirit!

Source: A Rosary for Lent (C. Scribner & Co., 1872), 108–116.