Will-To-God

What can be done when all we see are our faults and failures and we feel hopelessly mired down in self-concern? At those times it is good to remember that your intention to know and love God is what Bernadette called the ‘will-to-God’. That will is completely untouched by feelings, however strong or dark. God has indeed given us a grace in safeguarding that good will and we can answer those inner voices of discouragement by affirming with Thomas Merton: “… but I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.”

If our intention to know and love God is with us, even in the form of our concern that we are not as good as we should be, could be, then the will-to-God is alive and well, and we can trust that. Buddhist teachings speak of ‘intention’, which is very nearly the same thing as will, in the way I am speaking of it here. Mother Teresa said that everything we have already belongs to God, but the one and only thing that is our own to give is our will.  

Patricia