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On Humility
This is a copy of an
email message sent to Joe De Matteo’s Bible study group.
In our
studies of Genesis we find ourselves reading about how,
once again, the Israelites are making the wrong
decisions, and, because of this, they are having a hard
time. God still loves them, he is still calling to
them, but he has given them freewill, and allows them to
go on, as they will.
Last
time we met, it was brought up that some of the main
characters were pragmatists; the end result, their goal,
being the most important thing to them, and the fastest
way to it was the way they want to go.
Today's
reading (September 2, 2007) is about humility, and,
according to St Ignatius of Loyola (founder of the
Jesuits), this teaching of Jesus on humility has
something to do with pragmatism, often resulting in the
feeling that the end justifies the means.
St.
Ignatius:
“This
first kind of humility...is the kind that is necessary
for my eternal salvation, and consists in subjecting and
humbling myself, as far as I can, so that I obey the law
of God our Lord in everything; so much so that even if I
were made the lord of all created things in this world,
or even if my own life on this earth were at stake, I
would not deliberately set about breaking any law,
whether divine or human, that obliges me under the pain
of mortal sin.
This is
the thing that caused all the people that we’ve met in
Genesis (as well as us today) to have trouble.
They made decisions, they set goals, and
they worked toward those goals. When those goals
became hard to attain, they did
everything that they could: deceat,
manipulation, murder; they broke any law; but mostly
they put their faith in God and their pursuit of Him on
the back burner.
The
problem is at the very beginning, as I see it, they (and
maybe we, too) were not doing what God wanted, they were
doing what they conjured up, and then compounded
this mistake by breaking God's laws to accomplish it.
It is not
about us, it is about God. What God wants us to do.
We, each of us, has said this during the time we’ve been
together.
We search
for a better relationship with God, God must be our
goal: giving ourselves completely to God and obeying
Him.
The end
justifies the means, implies that anything goes; you
will do anything, break any law, push anyone aside,
disobey God; break faith with Him. This is immoral.
Furthermore, it is exactly what God does not want us to
do.
To the
questions of life God is the answer.
He created
us with freewill and He made us in His image, therefore,
we have the power to be gods here on earth, to do
wondrous things in this world, but that is not what He
want's of us. He wants us to decide to attain HIM. He
wants us to use our freewill and decide to give
ourselves to Him completely, and, as Mother Teresa
wrote, “To possess God, we must allow Him to possess our
souls… I for God, and God for me.”
The things
we want to do, even if they are ministries, the things
that we have decided to do out of love for God must take
a back seat to God’s will. He wants us to humbly go to
Him and give our complete selves to Him.
How many
times have I heard that little mantra, “let go, let
God.?
We want to
build a shed, there aren’t enough priests, you can add
to this list, I’m sure. Well, maybe the answer is for
us to give ourselves completely to God, beg Him to take
our soul, take control of our life, and to love us.
Then pray about these things that we want to fix for His
sake. In Psalm 23, “He leads me down the right path for
the sake of His name.”
I think
that I would love for our Bible Study group to go before
the Eucharist and pray that God lead us down the right
path for the sake of His name. |
