4th Sunday of Advent, B December 24, 2023
Fr. Alexander Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
Some of the most useful and most underrated words in all of Scripture are the ones the prophet Nathan says to King David in our first reading: “Go, do whatever you have in mind, for the LORD is with you.” These words can pull you back to the center from one of two dangerous extremes: excessive self-reliance and crippling uncertainty.
By far the most common one is excessive self-reliance. Even being too worried about what other people think is relying on how your “self” looks to others. When it comes to making decisions, most people do “whatever [they] have in mind” without considering whether or not “the Lord is with” them. Sure, most people believe there is a God, but only a minority of people act like that God matters in daily life. Beyond a vague sense that God cares about what’s right and wrong, we tend not to invest a lot of effort in doing what God wants for us.
This matters. So many of the great conflicts in history don’t have clear lines of good versus evil. Both sides are usually acting in their best interest and both sides had plenty of good and bad people. Most people consider the Allied Powers in World War I to have been the right side, but, even if that’s mostly true, it’s still not so simple.
On Christmas Eve in 1914, British soldiers in one part of the trenches heard Christmas carols coming from the Germans on the other side of the battle front. After some shouted messages, both sides agreed to meet in the middle the next day – Christmas Day – for a temporary truce. They exchanged gifts, sang, and played soccer with the people they had being trying to kill just 24 hours ago. Up to that point, men on both sides were making their decisions out of understandable, but self-reliant reasons: survival, winning the war, earning the paycheck. For a single day in the midst of the most gruesome war up to that point in history, God’s presence accomplished what self-reliance could not.
Alas, it did not last and fighting resumed. Even when the war was won, overly human ways of thinking about treaties and justice probably created the conditions that led to World War II.
“Do whatever you have in mind” only works if you’ve allowed the Lord to be “with you,” to truly dwell in that mind through grace and prayer. St. Augustine famously summarized the commands of Christ as “Love, and do what you will.” The trick, of course, is to really understand and live out love so that what you will genuinely flows out of that love rather than sin and selfishness.
In getting to that point, however, we must beware the opposite extreme of crippling uncertainty. For those people who are rightly suspicious of merely human motivations, there is the danger of surrendering too much of their freedom and responsibility. In genuinely seeking to know and follow God’s will, we sometimes fall into the trap of expecting God to micromanage us, to give some direct inspiration for every decision we make. Is God’s will that I live here or there? This job or that? That I eat muffins or cereal for breakfast?
When we inevitably find ourselves without a clear idea of God’s preference in every single decision, we can begin to worry that it must be our fault. “I know God wants me to do his will, so I must be missing his signs. If I keep missing it, I’m going to mess everything up and end up in hell! What do I do, how do I know what God wants?”
There’s a very insidious lie behind that worry: this idea that God is toying with us, hiding his will just out of reach… as if our salvation is a tricky puzzle. That either reduces us to constant anxiety or we realize how unjust and cruel that is so that we end up rejecting God entirely.
But God is not cruel and he is not unjust. He wants us to get to heaven. He wants us to do his will. He is not going to hide His will from anyone who sincerely wants to follow it. What does that mean for people who can’t figure out His will in each individual decision? That they aren’t sincere enough? Maybe. But, for people genuinely living a life of faith, it’s more likely that they just have false expectations.
God is not a micromanager. He gave us our reason for a reason. He gave us his commandments, revealed his overall plan, and told us to get to work. What is God’s will for you? Avoid sin, pray, receive the sacraments, grow in virtue, proclaim the Gospel. God is not going to send an angel every morning to tell you exactly what words to say. The vast majority of your decisions will be yours to make. As long as you are praying, learning, and genuinely practicing your Catholic faith, the default assumption is that any reasonable decision you make fits with God’s will. When you have grace in your soul, your will is God’s will.
Now, we make mistakes all the time. Sometimes, even if we’re “all prayed up” and making good decisions, it’s not quite God’s will. Don’t worry! God’s got this. He will let you know! That’s exactly what happens in the first reading and the Gospel. Mary herself – who never sinned – did not correctly guess God’s will. So, in both cases, God took their sincere efforts and enlightened them to put them on the right path.
King David had spent his life following God’s will despite his occasional failures, so Nathan was right to tell him to follow his intention to build a temple. God had special plans, so he sent Nathan to tell him “good intention, but here’s what I actually want in this case.”
Mary was sinless, but that doesn’t make her omniscient. She had planned to remain a virgin even in marriage, so she assumed that meant she wouldn’t have any children of her own. She was half-right. God did intend her to remain a virgin, but to make her a mother also.
Here’s the important part. Once they learned that their reasonable plan wasn’t God’s plan, they agreed to God’s plan because that’s what they wanted anyway. And once they knew what it was, they stuck to it. David didn’t constantly ask for more signs to not build the temple, he simply prepared for his son to build it, trusting that God was with him. Mary didn’t constantly ask God what to feed Jesus or to teach him, she just used her prudence, trusting that the Lord was with her. Each of them had additional revelations on occasion, but for the most part, they kept “the Lord with” them and then “did whatever” they had in mind.
So it should be with us. Do not rely on yourself or on worldly ideas to lead your life. Take this warning seriously! Most of us are far more likely to be in the first group than the second. If Scripture and Tradition teach us that there’s something we should or should not do, that’s God’s will! When a faithful sermon, book, or work of art pricks your conscience or you get a nudge in prayer, pay attention to it!
Yet, if we really are seeking God’s will, trying to avoid sin, filling our souls with grace through prayer, sacraments, and acts of charity… then, yes, we ought to make good use of our own reason even as we strive to enlighten that reason further. Trust that God has factored your foolishness into his plans for you. Trust that he isn’t hiding his will from you to try to trap you. Trust that, when you misunderstand or misjudge his will, he will come like the good shepherd to lead you back. Do not be afraid! Through Jesus Christ, you too have found favor with God! If you let him, he will dwell in you as he dwells in Mary. Don’t be afraid to “do whatever you have mind.” Just be sure to first fill your mind with his word; like Mary, to mean it when you say with her to God, “may it be done to me according to your word.”