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“There is a Messiah, and it’s not you.”
God could do precious little if He could not sustain me one more day.
Each of us is called to a unique vocation in life, based on the desires that God plants within us, as well as our talents, skills, and personalities.
For the deepest vocation is to become who you are, to become your “true self,” the person whom God created and calls you to be.
It took me many readings of this poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins before realizing how much it is about being who you are.
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came. I say móre: the just man justices; Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is— Christ—for Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
“Don’t let anyone take from you the freedom to become who God wants you to be.”
The Almighty Artisan A rough and unshapen log has no idea that it can be made into a statue that will be considered a masterpiece, but the carver sees what can be done with it. So many . . . do not understand that God can mold them into saints, until they put themselves into the hands of that almighty Artisan. —St. Ignatius Loyola
It’s always difficult to avoid comparison with others and to think not only that they have it easier, but that they are somehow holier than you are. So you need to maintain a healthy tension between acceptance and desire. On the one hand, you honor the person God made—with your background, personality, talents, skills, and strengths. On the other, you allow God to move you in new directions, to change, to grow, and to discover who you are meant to be. God has created something wonderful in you, but God is still creating.
Much of my own journey to self-acceptance involved letting go of the need to be somebody else. Nobody in particular, just a feeling that I needed to be different.
It is dangerous to make everyone go forward by the same road, and worse to measure others by yourself. —St. Ignatius Loyola
At heart, the envy boiled down to this: everyone else has it easier than I do. And so they are obviously happier than I am.
One tends to compare one’s own life, which is always an obvious mixture of good and bad, with what one falsely perceives as the perfect life of the other. In this way, we minimize our own gifts and graces and maximize the other person’s.
sometimes do the opposite with problems, shortcomings, and struggles: we maximize our own and minimize the other person’s.
First, remember that God loves you.
Second, realize that God loves you as an
individual, not simply in the abstract.
Third, accept your desires, skills, and talents as things given to you by God for your happiness and for others.
Fourth, avoid the temptation to compare yourself to others and denigrate or undervalue yourself.
Fifth, move away from actions that are sinful or that keep you from being compassionate, loving, and free.
Sixth, trust that God will help you because God desires for you to become who you are meant to be. And pray for God’s help.
Seventh, recognize that the process of becoming the person you are meant to be is a long process and can take time.
Patience is an important companion on the path to discovering your own vocation, to becoming the person you would like to become, and, in fact, to any change. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit paleontologist, who knew about the slow working of time, wrote this in a letter to a friend, on patience: Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—and that it may take a very long time.
contemplative in action,
finding God in all things.
The contemplative in action seeks God and seeks to find God in action.
That means that he or she sees the world in an incarnational way, a third definition. God dwells in real things, real places, and real people. Not just “up there” but “all around.”
detachment and freedom, a fourth goal. You desire freedom from anything that prevents you from following along the way. You want to free yourself from any excess baggage.
You want, as Ignatius said, to be free of “disordered attachments.” And you have to be careful not to start down paths that will lead
you away from God. As Ignatius would say, you ha...
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Contemplatives in action seek to find God in all things by looking at the world in an incarnational way, and, in their quest, they realize their desire for freedom and detachment, which helps them move even closer to
The Exercises are not meant to be read, they’re meant to be experienced.
