Proposed beatitudes

I want to propose a couple of new beatitudes. Here’s the first:

Blessed are they who were born without will power, for they shall have to depend on God.

Spiritual power and will power are two different things. Some of us, myself included, have none of the latter, but all of us have the former in abundance – if only we choose to appropriate it.

The two really have nothing whatever to do with each other. I can certainly not bend God to my will any more than God needs me to accomplish His purposes. If, however, I abandon my will in favor of His, then I have the opportunity of being an instrument in His hands – if He chooses to use me. My faith confirms the certainty within me that He desires my instrumentality, albeit that we both know He has a poor workman on the staff. Puny as I am, I’m reminded of what Pope John Paul II once told the priests in Florida while visiting the U.S. We have a tendency to forget, the Pope said, that God can use not only our strength but also our weakness – that our weakness can be most effective in His service.

Along these same lines, I know that there is much about me that I am powerless to change. Even though I want to, I can’t, no matter how many resolutions I make. Left to my own devices, I’m beat, whipped, doomed – a hopeless case.

Go ahead, scoff. Say I could change if I wanted to. Browbeat me. Say I’m the master of my own ship. All the old chidings. They will do no good. I know that my only hope is not in will power, but in spiritual power. Not that I live, but that Christ lives in me. Not that I accomplish, but that God accomplishes in my behalf. I know that my victory will come in and through the beneficence and grace of Jesus Christ the Lord. He’s the real power.

My second beatitude says: Blessed are they who don’t make people their project, for they shall make some authentic friends.

It seems to me that there are so many religious programs around these days that some of them have begun to run their course for want of adherents. In the wake of this shortage of applicants, people have abandoned certain bounds of authenticity in an effort to lure others onto the roles of commencing experiences. I don’t think there’s malice in this: there’s just something cold about it. Recruitment activities seem to me to objectify “pigeons,” rather than spring from sincerity of wanting to offer a genuine friend a genuine opportunity to grow closer to God. Even as we are moved to share our faith with others, should we not begin by accepting them just as they are? In my own zeal to recruit, I have had ulterior motives in establishing relationships. I have found myself being less that honest. Better, I think, to have a sincere, unrecruited friend than a disillusioned acquaintance.

Maybe what it takes is more spiritual power and less will power. – T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on January 10th, 1988