He Leadeth Me: An Extraordinary Testament of Faith

by Walter J. Ciszek

It is a sad commentary on our human frailty that we fail to think of God or see him behind the comfortable routines of our day-to-day existence.

One thing only need be of great concern to us in all this seeming upheaval and catastrophe: to be faithful to God and to look to him in everything, confident of his love and his constancy, aware that

this world and this new order was not our lasting city any more than the previous one had been, and striving always to know his will and to do it each day of our lives.

“Man

is created to praise, reverence, and serve God Our Lord, and by this means to save his soul. The other things on the face of the earth are created for man to help him in attaining the end for which he is created. Hence, man is to make use of them insofar as they help him in the attainment of his end, and he must rid himself of them insofar as they prove a hindrance to him. Therefore, we must make ourselves indifferent to all created things.”

This

tendency to set acceptable conditions upon God, to seek unconsciously to make his will for us coincide with our desires, is a very human trait.

Learning

full truth of our dependence upon God and our relation to his will is what the virtue of humility is all about.

God’s will was “out there” somewhere, hidden, yet clear and unmistakable. It was my role—man’s role—to discover what it was and then

conform my will to that, and so work at achieving the ends of his divine providence.

This simple truth, that the sole purpose of man’s life on earth is to do the will of God, contains in it riches and resources enough for a lifetime. Once you have learned to live with it uppermost in mind, to see each day and each day’s activities in its light, it becomes more than a source of eternal salvation; it becomes a source of joy and happiness here on earth. The notion that the human will, when united with the divine will, can play a part in Christ’s work of redeeming all mankind is overpowering.

Each day, every day of our lives, God presents to us the people and opportunities upon which he expects us to act. He expects no more of us, but he will accept nothing less of us; and we fail in our promise and commitment if we do not see in the situations of every moment of every day his divine will.