One’s existential situation: an opportunity to discover and actualise the Father’s will
This is the third of five blogs intended to help you to DISCOVER and ACTUALISE the will of the Father for you. Press this link if you wish to start reading from the first blog.
The awareness of one’s existential situation includes for example: one’s state of life (married, ordained minister, or consecrated); the place where one lives and operates (the social, economic, environmental and ecclesiastical situation); the profession; and one’s actual life experience including the physical and emotional health factors.
According to the biblical mentality, it is in this existential situation of the individual that the will of the Father is understood and accomplished. It is in this existential situation where the person has an opportunity to do the will of the Father by:
1) Being a witness of Christ till the end of the world
This is mainly a characteristic of the Synoptic Gospels as well as the book of the Acts of the Apostles. They consider the existential situation in the world as the place of the mission of the disciples.
In fact, it is in this existential situation that Christ sends the disciples
- to “all nations” (Matthew 28:19),
- “into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15),
- to preach to all humanity the conversion and the forgiveness of sins, starting from Jerusalem (Luke 24:47).
The strength of the Holy Spirit is a guarantee of a mission which only the Father knows the times, but which the apostles also knew will extend “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
2. being an ambassador of reconciliation between God and the world
This is mainly a characteristic of Saint Paul who interprets the apostolic ministry as a vocation to reconcile the world with God, a world that became guilty through the fall (Romans 3:19) and dominated by death (Romans 5:12), a creation that lives its fall as a condemnation and waits to be liberated (Romans 8:20-22).
3. deciding in favour or against His will
Saint John particularly expresses this in his dualist perspective regarding the world.
On one side, the world is seen as the object of God’s love, as God’s work, created through the Word (1:1-3) and above all, as the place in which God has sent his Son (3:16-17; 11:27; 16:28; 17:21-23; 18:37; 1 John 4:9).
On the other side, the world can become the kingdom of Satan (John 12:31;16:1; 1 John 5:19), the world of the incredulous, of darkness (John 3:19), of lies (12:35-36), of hate and death (7:7; 15:19) and it coincides with those people who refuse to recognize the revelation of God in Jesus, that prefer darkness to the light (3:18-21; 5:24; 7:37; 10:9; 12:46-47), that with darkness of their own self-sufficiency oppose the divine appeal (2:23-35; 6:71; 8:31; 13:27-30; 15:6).
Aware of this imperative role that the existential situation has in understanding and doing the will of the Father, the person can discern this will by reflecting on one’s actual situation with the aid of scriptures.
An excellent example of how one’s existential situation can elicit the will of God, is found in the letter of Charles de Foucauld to Abbé Caron, where he states that
“Direct evangelization is not possible at this moment; the only possible way to live is the life of Nazareth, in poverty and its humiliations, in worship, in manual or intellectual work.”
Charles de Foucauld, Letter from 1 October 1906 to Abbé Caron, as in Gisbert Greshake, “The Spiritual Charism of Nazareth” in Communio 31 (Spring 2004), p. 23.
Thus, de Foucauld, by being aware of his existential situation, understood better the will of the Father for him.
What might be some of the opportunities the world is offering you to actualise the Will of the Father?
Asking questions
One of the means that might help to elicit the will of God from one’s existential situation is that of asking questions.
De Foucauld explains to the Poor Clares at Nazareth,
“In order to be entirely detached from yourself, to forget oneself totally and to be concerned in all things with God’s glory, the best way seems to be to ask yourself constantly what Jesus would think, say, or do in your place and then to think, say, and do what He would do. In this way you will forget yourself completely since your one desire is to imitate Jesus and so you will be concerned not with yourself but with the glory of God, since you live like Jesus who lived only for this glory.”
Charles de Foucauld, April, 1814, in S. Chauleur, Charles de Faucauld et Mère Saint-Michel, abbesse des Clarisse de Nazareth; as in Edouard Cothent et al., Imitating Christ, trans. by, Simone Inkel and Lucy Tinsley, Abbey Press, St.Meinrad IN 1974, p. 64.
What would Jesus do?
ask yourself constantly what Jesus would think, say, or do in your place
Charles de Foucauld
From the human point of view, such questions are a powerful tool that can keep the individual on the alert in search for concrete answers.
Psychology teaches us that when a person is confronted by a question, it continues to search until it find an answer.
“If the brain were a refrigerator, questions would be the magnets on the door. The brain has difficulty ignoring or letting go of a question because it creates a cognitive dissonance. The human brain is hard-wired to seek intellectual equilibrium. It desperately wants to resolve the dissonance. This explains why when we can’t think of the name of something or someone at the moment we want to retrieve it, then suddenly hours (or maybe even days) later the name comes to us. Part of the brain continues to do the “search” in order to resolve the discomfort of not knowing the answer.”
John Dyer, Cognitive Coaching: An executive summary, Centre for Cognitive Coaching, Highlands Ranch CO 2006, p.16.
This was the third of 5 blogs intended to help you to DISCOVER and ACTUALISE the will of the Father for you.
Follow the link below to continue your journey
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