The Father’s Will: a gift that has to be freely accepted

This is the final blog of five 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 Father’s Will must be accepted through self-commitment

The Father’s Will must be accepted through our self-commitment since the Holy Spirit does not substitute our freedom but brings about and sustains our free response to discover and live God’s dream. 

Veritatis Splendor clearly states, “The awareness of having received the gift of possessing in Jesus Christ the love of God, generates and sustains the free response of a full love for God and our fellow Christians” (Veritatis Splendor, n. 24). That is, God’s will: 1) Does not substitute our freedom to ‘accept’ or ‘deny’ this gift. 2) ‘Generates’ our free response and ‘sustains’ it.

Thus we have an active role in accepting or denying the Father’s will through your actions.

Saint James explains:

“What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you?  If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food,  and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?  So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead […]. Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith apart from works is barren? Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. […] You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone […] as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead” (James 2:14-26).

Note: Here we could note that this approach of saint James might seem to contradict the idea of Justification apart from works of Saint Paul. However, as Vanhoye comments, although “this, in appearance, seem to be a contradiction, but if we look at the texts more closely we see there is no contradiction since saint James speaks of justification by works of faith. On this point, Paul is in complete agreement with James, even if he does not express himself the same way. For Paul, the faith that counts is the faith that works through love” Albert Vanhoye, “Catechism and the bible,” First Things 74 (June/July 1997), p. 37.

A note on ‘Emotional wanting’ vs ‘Rational wanting’

During the process of discernment in finding God’s Will, there are always two phases: the ‘emotional wanting’ and the ‘rational wanting.’

A mature discernment of the will of the Father requires that a person passes from the phase of ‘emotional wanting’ to that of ‘rational wanting.’

The principal means that might help to do so are prayer, reflection, and spiritual direction.

Cf., Luigi M. Rulla, Depth Psychology and Vocation: A Psycho-Social Perspective, PUG, Rome 1971, pp. 31-37.

A gift that has to be freely accepted

The actualisation of God’s dream, is only possible through God’s gratuitous self-gift, a gift which cannot be lived by a human person, if it is not freely accepted through a personal commitment. 

The reason is that the Holy Spirit does not substitute the freedom of the person. 

On the other hand, the acceptance of this gift cannot occur merely through one’s effort, but due to the will and strength of the Holy Spirit: since “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3; cf. Romans 8:9). 

If the tension between grace (mystical gift) and personal effort is not lived, one might rely only on grace, and thus, God’s Dream will never be actualised. On the other side, if one relies only on the personal effort, God’s Dream will be rendered merely to a personal initiative; thus it will become one’s dream and not that of God.

By becoming aware that the actualisation of God’s dream is a gift, the individual learns more about the responsibility one has in accepting or denying this gift.

‘Freedom from’ and ‘Freedom to’

This experience to freely discover, accept, and live God’s dream, is not complete without an understanding of another gift of the Holy Spirit that we all have received, which is freedom.

Freedom is an exceptional sign of the image of God in the person. Freedom is a fundamental part of the dignity of a human person since it is “only in freedom that the human person can direct oneself towards what is good” (Gaudium et Spes, n. 17).

It helps the human person to “act in a conscious and free choice, as moved and drawn in a personal way from within and not by blind internal impulses or by mere external constraint” (Gaudium et Spes, n. 17).

Freedom does not mean doing what one wants, but freeing oneself from what is evil to be free to glorify God.

Thus, according to revelation, the free-response to the Gift of the Holy Spirit to discover and live the God’s Dream for you does not consist of having an option to choose or deny this gift, even if the person can do that. 

Freedom, according to revelation, consists of an effort to free oneself from sin to be truly free to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, which generates and sustains the free response of the individual to live according to the Dream of God.