“Holy! Holy! Holy!” they sing. Ready, prompt and willing must go along with a glorious hymn like that one.
It was all getting to be a bit much. I have had Parkinson’s Disease for 14 years. Negotiating the distance by foot between St. John XXIII poustinia and St. Goupil’s in order to send an email or get a jug of clean water was getting to be one step too many. For eight years I had struggled to do it, but now I was giving it up. It was “suggested” I go to a place with running water and relatively simple internet access. So, I moved.
Do you ever wonder what the difference is between giving up and giving in? To me, giving up means to quit the battle, for winning it has now become futile. Giving in means to change tactics, discontinuing the effort here so as to resume it again elsewhere.
As the years pass, we slowly tend to give out. Energy decreases, concentration wavers, strength diminishes, resilience atrophies. Time after time we are presented with a choice: give up or give in? Make the right decision, and you give out more slowly. Make the wrong decision, and it happens faster. But a decision will have to be made, since life is moving on, and we’re all called to move along with it, making the best use of the time as God directs.
“Never give up!” a doctor said to me some months ago. I agreed, but thinking about it later, I noticed that he did not say, “Never give in.” Instead, he said, “Would you like a prescription for a walker?” (I said, “Not today, thanks.”)
What to some people is obviously a matter of sensible giving in can feel like giving up, big time. It’s hard to swallow, like a big pill. Anyway, I walked unassisted out of his office with as much dignity as I could muster. As I walked down the street to where I had parked the car, I looked around to see if anyone else was using a walker to get around that part of Gatineau. (There wasn’t anyone in view.)
The will of God is something like this for us, no matter what our age or physical condition. Given our resistance to being told what to do by either divinity or humanity, doing God’s will often involves a giving in to what God asks. “I surrendered to God,” we say. In other words, I gave in to him on this one, by his grace. Giving in indicates to me that he and I have a partnership at work here — he leadeth me, but not like a marionette or a dog on a leash. Rather, I am more like a cat when it comes to obeying God. I may or may not show much interest in his latest request or command, but if you ask me in just the “right” way, I am likely to acquiesce! Fortunately for me, the Lord is very merciful in this regard and puts up with my walking towards him sideways — purr, purr. And I can still do it without a walker, so there!
Giving up would mean I would no longer have my say in divine matters concerning my humble self. Maybe for visible results it doesn’t make much difference, but interiorly there is all the difference in the world.
Of course, that is the whole point in doing the Father’s will as Jesus taught us: to make all the difference in the world…and in oneself. For only our Father knows how it is all to work out for the world or for you and me. It’s a cosmic kind of thing, for what could be more cosmic than his will being done “on earth as it is in heaven?”
I wonder how his will plays itself out in heaven. Now that it’s only good angels up there, I expect it must be a pretty simple affair. Angels gaze on God, see clearly, and seem rather prompt in response to God by our earthly human standards. “Holy! Holy! Holy!” they sing. Ready, prompt, and willing must go along with a glorious hymn like that one. Even human beings, now up there because Jesus got the gates opened up for us, must not be at all catlike in their carrying out joyfully, even gleefully, God’s holy will.
For me, this will probably all take some getting used to. Probably means some prep work done in purgatory over some fittingly long period. That’s logical, but then I remember that God’s will is so often filled with (to us) surprises. I bet even angels can be wonderfully taken off guard if the Lord in his mystery so chooses. Hmm, not sure Thomas Aquinas would go for that one. …
Meanwhile, here in the Kingdom of God’s earthly subdivision, God’s will remains mysterious to us in so many ways. Yet we can be sure that whatever we are asked to do or not to do — or commanded, or warned, or pleaded with — his will is wonderful in its effects and wonderful in its implementation.
Have you ever wondered how your little, not-that-influential life is fitting into, or more strangely, making a difference in the unfolding schema of things?
I’ve been wondering about neurological disorders in that regard for some time. I have often thought that the whole universe could probably benefit from an elimination of all such disorders, and let’s throw in cancer and cardiac diseases as well to sweeten the package. But God, who does not seem opposed to progress in these areas, doesn’t seem at all disposed to eliminate them from contributing to his on-earth-as-in-heaven idea.
Rather, he is aiming to use these things as a kind of prep for the glory to come, and as a kind of monstrance of his glory at work in us even now. He has even sent messengers to me of late to clarify the picture a little bit. One, a retired nurse, said that she had just heard about my situation, and she said, “God bless you; you’ve really won a prize and been found worthy in some beautiful way. I will pray for you.” Then she gave me a warm, grandmotherly hug, though I think she is about the same age as me!
Not long afterwards, someone who is largely confined to a wheelchair, wondered aloud in my presence if her particular illness was really Jesus loving her from the illness itself. She said, “Have all these years really been about Jesus loving me from within my illness? Has he been that close all along?” In both instances, I was really touched by what was said.
Imagine seeing all this in the ever-greater mysterious light of heaven! Maybe we can give in before we give out after all, and that, too, will share in the mystery of God’s victory, and his being “all in all”…and all that!
