God’s Dream For Us
We’re in that first novena, those nine days of prayer between the Feast of the Ascension and the Feast of Pentecost, when the Apostles were gathered together in the Upper Room with Our Lady. Our Lord has ascended to the Father, and now we’re waiting for the Advocate, promised to us by Our Lord, who will make it possible for us to follow after Our Lord.
This is God’s dream for us - and what a dream! To think that we could follow after Christ to the right hand of the Father as well! Could we ever imagine a greater dream for ourselves? No wonder we always degrade ourselves when we try to create a destiny according to our own liking. Any other dream, compared to the one God has for us, would necessarily be a degradation of our humanity.
And isn’t this what we see all over the world today. Men try to create a destiny accomplished through war and violence, and they degrade themselves in doing so. Young people try to create a destiny for themselves through licentiousness, and they degrade themselves in doing so. But we priests do as well, when we imagine that personal ambition or exhibitionism can accomplish more than obedience. We only degrade ourselves.
What Christ wants for us is that we would be lifted up, once and for all, from the dust and dung of pride and willfulness, and for us to follow His example of humble self surrender. This is the freedom He is offering us, freedom from the pride of the Ancient Foe, whose rejection of God’s plan has cost him the beatific vision. God forbid that should happen to us!
God, make me humble. God, make me lowly. God, make me like Your mother. God, make me like Your Son. Teach me how to pray, which is to lift my mind and my heart to You always, and in all things, that I might know what is Your will for me. And give me the grace to do Your holy will always. Oh God, send the Holy Spirit into my heart to teach me to trust that Your will, Your dream for me, is greater than anything I can imagine.
Let us remember that the Saints are the happiest people in human history. In fact, it may be argued that the Saints are the only happy people in history. Is it possible even to imagine being happy were we not to become Saints? Wouldn’t that be the same thing as imagining that we could follow some rival plan for our lives, propped up in opposition to God’s will for us, contrived and fabricated by our own wants?
I’ve spent too much time on that road to ever want to travel down that way again. And I know many of you have as well. Will we allow God to make us Saints? Will we allow Him to accomplish in us what He accomplished in His Son, and take us to Himself, even as He has taken His Son to His right hand forever? +