30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
Previous Years: [None]
Preached at Church of the Assumption in Bellingham, WA
Part of our series on the Next Step program from the Evangelical Catholic. Information can be found here: https://www.ecnextstep.com/
Recording
https://moorejesus.podbean.com/e/fighting-willfulness-with-prayer/
Transcript
Thank you to an Assumption parishioner for her help with editing this transcript.
I only read about 5% of the books recommended to me by parishioners, because there are a lot of recommendations and a lot of stuff that I want to read myself. But recently, a parishioner recommended to me a book that hit me at exactly the right place, at exactly the right time. She recommended He Leadeth Me by Father Walter Ciszek. Father Ciszek was an American Jesuit from Allentown, Pennsylvania, and in 1929, Pope Pius the 11th called for missionaries to Russia. Russia was sort of this big communist, officially atheistic force on the world stage, and Pius 11th knew that these people were being lied to about God by their government. And we needed missionaries in Russia to preach the gospel to them. And so Father Ciszek responded to that call. He was trained in Rome in Russian. He was originally of Polish descent, so he already knew Polish. He’s trained in Russian, prepared for the Russian missions. And then the Soviet Union shut its borders to priests. So Father Ciszek was assigned to eastern Poland in the late 30s. Well, in the late 30s, at the beginning of World War Two, Germany came in and took half of Poland. And then the Red Army came in and took the other half of Poland. So Father Ciszek found himself under the occupation of the Soviet Union. He did that for a while, but the Soviets were no friend of religion, and he wasn’t having much of an effect, even in Poland at his mission.
And so he decided to finally carry out the mission that he had signed up to do: he smuggled himself into Russia with other Polish refugees. They were looking for work, he was looking for mission, and he found himself in the heart of the Soviet Union. It didn’t last very long. He was quickly arrested, and the Soviets accused him of being a spy for the Vatican. Because, of course, in their mind, Jesus doesn’t exist. The gospel doesn’t exist. And so the only reason he could be here is for political reasons. He must be a spy for the Vatican. And so he was arrested and placed in solitary confinement in Moscow. It was a very strict solitary confinement. He was almost driven mad just by the isolation from people. And then he was quickly subjected to interrogation, Soviet interrogation techniques, where, after all that isolation, he was interrogated through the night, sometimes interrogated for 48 hours straight and not allowed to sleep. It was a horrible place to be, and he was interrogated and interrogated, and he began with great hope. And then he was just beaten down more and more psychologically worn out, to the point that after a year of these Soviet interrogations, he broke down and signed a false confession admitting to being a Vatican spy, admitting to all of the plots that he planned to carry out in the Soviet Union.
That failure, that moment where his will failed him. It really deeply disturbed him. And he wrote this immediately following.
Slowly, reluctantly, under the gentle proddings of grace, I faced the truth that was at the root of my problem and my shame. The answer was a single word: I. I was ashamed because I knew in my heart that I had tried to do too much on my own, and I had failed. I felt guilty because I realized, finally, that I had asked for God’s help but had really believed in my own ability to avoid evil and to meet every challenge. I had spent much time in prayer over the years, I had come to appreciate and thank God for his providence and care of me and of all men, but I had never really abandoned myself to it. In a way, I had been thanking God all the while that I was not like the rest of men, that he had given me a good physique, steady nerves, and a strong will, and that with these physical graces given by God I would continue to do his will at all times and to the best of my ability. In short, I felt guilty and ashamed because in the last analysis I had relied almost completely on myself in this most critical test – and I had failed. (p. 68)
And I was trying to think of an analogy of what Father Ciszek is talking about here.
The best one that came to me is it’s sort of like a car. We treat God like the gas station. We’re very thankful. We go to him, we fuel up, we’re thankful for that fuel. We’re thankful for that grace. But then we drive away wherever we want to go. Thank you, God, for this gas. I’ve got it from here. I’m still in control. Father Ciszek was a good priest. He had a missionary heart. He answered the call to a very difficult mission. And yet even in that, he thanked God for all of the graces and all of the blessings of his life that he maintained control over. Thank you, God, for giving me all of these gifts. I’ve got it from here. But in reality, we’re not like the car that gets filled up by God. We’re like the trailer being pulled wherever God wants to take us, we have no control at all. Father Ciszek himself before this interrogator, knowing that he needed to deny this report in front of him, knowing that he needed not to sign, begging God for the words. And those words never came. He begged the Holy Spirit to tell him what to say, and yet he didn’t ever have those words. And he failed. And he signed. And reflecting on that, he said:
Had I not even set the terms upon which the Holy Spirit was to intervene in my behalf? Had I not expected him to prompt me to give an answer I had already predetermined was the answer I would give? When I failed to feel his promptings along the lines I expected – indeed, that I demanded – I was frustrated and disappointed. It was then I felt he had abandoned me, and I proceeded to try to do on my own what I had already determined was the thing that must be done. I had not really left myself open to the Spirit. I had, in fact, long ago decided what I expected to hear from the Spirit and when I did not hear precisely that I had felt betrayed. Whatever else the Spirit might have been telling me at that hour, I could not hear. I was so intent on hearing only one message, the message I wanted to hear, that I was not really listening at all. (pp. 68 – 69)
Even after signing this false confession, Father Ciszek was kept in solitary confinement for another four years in this prison, and in that time, the Soviets leveraged this confession that he made. They tried to push on him and say, well, you’ve already admitted to doing these things. Let us help you then find freedom. Why don’t you be our liaison to Rome with the Pope? And of course, because our government has taken care of you, you will send us back information from Rome.
They wanted him to be a Soviet spy in the Vatican. They gave him all of these different opportunities. And he was distraught because he was indecisive. He was so ashamed of having signed this confession and so psychologically beaten down by the Soviets that he didn’t know if he was going to take them up on these offers. And he would go in and meet with the interrogator and hem and haw, try to buy more time. But he struggled, and he struggled so deeply with all of these doubts that at some point he found himself in a moment of absolute despair. He says that he lost sight entirely of God, and was left only with the blackness of atheism and a complete lack of hope. When he finally recovered his senses, blessedly, his formation as a priest reminded him to turn immediately to God. And so he did, specifically to the image of our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane, where He himself, Jesus, struggled with what He needed to do. Ask the father that the trial should be taken from Him. But then at the end always said, not my will, but thy will be done. Reflecting on that, Father Ciszek writes:
What a wonderful treasure and source of strength and consolation our Lord’s agony became for me from that moment on. I saw clearly exactly what I must do. […] I knew that I must abandon myself entirely to the will of the Father and live from now on in this spirit of self-abandonment to God. (p. 76)
For my part, I was brought to make this perfect act of faith, this act of complete self-abandonment to his will, of total trust in his love and concern for me and his desire to sustain and protect me, by the experience of a complete despair of my own powers and abilities that had preceded it. I knew I could no longer trust myself, and it seemed only sensible then to trust totally in God. It was the grace God had been offering me all my life, but which I had never really had the courage to accept in full. I had talked of finding and doing his will, but never in the sense of totally giving up my own will. I had talked of trusting him, indeed I truly had trusted him, but never in the sense of abandoning all other sources of support and relying on his grace alone. I could never find it in me, before, to give up self completely. There were always boundaries beyond which I could not go, little hedges marking out what I knew in the depths of my being was the point of no return. God in his providence had been constant in his grace, always providing opportunities for this act of perfect faith and trust in him, always urging me to let go the reins and trust in him alone. I had trusted him, I had cooperated with his grace – but only up to a point. Only when I had reached a point of total bankruptcy of my own powers had I at last surrendered. (p. 78)
Surrender sustained Father Ciszek through another 18 years of Soviet work camps and harassment before he finally escaped that country.18 years. But after this moment, he knew that every moment was the will of God for him, and he knew his peace and serenity was found in engaging with whatever that day brought, whatever the will of God was for him, simply saying yes to what was before him. So we have to ask ourselves, why in the gospel did the tax collector go home justified and not the Pharisee? Well, Father Ciszek’s experience shows us exactly why. The Pharisee thanked God for incredible things. Thank you, God that you have preserved me from sin. Thank you God that you have helped me in a good religious practice. How wonderful those things are and how wonderful to thank God for them. But the Pharisee went to God with his own powers, and he said, thank you, God, for these gifts which I am in control of. Thank you for giving me these things that allow me to be good. But the tax collector, this great sinner of the ancient world, went to God with nothing and said, Lord, the only thing I have, the only thing I can bring to you, is my sin.
Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. The tax collector went to the Lord in utter bankruptcy of his powers and his merits. He went to the Lord saying, I am empty and have nothing. We are justified when we go to the Lord in bankruptcy, when we go to the Lord and say, have mercy on me, a sinner. It’s so easy for us to treat Him like a gas station. Thank you for filling me up, Lord. I’m so glad that I can now go wherever I want with these gifts. We have to let Him pull us along. We have to go to Him with nothing in our hands, absolutely empty. Because only when we are empty can He take control. Only when we are empty can He be in charge and save us and justify us. Today’s next step card is about praying every day. Over the last few months, I’ve given us the definition of prayer. That prayer is conforming our will to the will of God. The difficulty in accepting that definition of prayer is that it requires that we give up our own will, because if it’s a battle of wills between us and God, God has to be the one who wins. That’s why we have to go to Him in bankruptcy. We can’t fight God because we’re going to lose, and yet we fight God every day anyway. I have people come up to me all the time and say, father, I can’t pray, I’m too distracted or I don’t feel like it, or I always forget. And I know that life, I live that life for years and years and years. Why is it hard to pray? It’s hard to pray because we are willful. Because we are so attached to our own desires and our own will. This is what I want to do. I find I go home most days and I need to go to bed. I know I need a good night’s sleep, and yet I take another hour or two just to myself playing stupid phone games because I resent, in some part of me not having complete control over my day, having to respond to whatever God puts in my path. And so in order to fulfill my will, I take that time. Well, that’s also why I spent so many years not praying. Because how dare the Lord tell me what to do! How dare He tell me to sit in prayer for five or 10 or 15 minutes or an hour a day? How dare He? I am in control. I will pray when I want to. We are so willful and we don’t pray because it hurts us to sit and give up our will.
It is painful for us to sit with the Lord and ask what He wants rather than what we want. It is so hard. But it is also so good for us. We don’t know what is good for us. We are weak and corrupted by sin. It is hard for us to really have a clear vision of where we need to go to be happy, but the Lord knows. And so to sit in His presence every day, and to give up our will to Him and say, Lord, not what I will, but what thy will to tell him that He is in control of our lives, and to give Him that control. It’s the healthiest thing we can possibly do. It’s the only thing that will bring us happiness and fulfillment. And yet we resist it all the time because we just want our own will. It is so hard to go to Him and say, simply, have mercy on me, a sinner. Well, the brilliance of these cards, they’re a recipe. Next step gives you steps, and you simply have to sit down and go through the steps. It’s like baking cookies. Do whatever is on the card. And this card, it talks about four types of prayer. So if you struggle to sit down and talk to God and again, it’s painful because we don’t want to give up our will.
But if you struggle to sit down and talk to God, this card talks about four different types of prayer. And I want to highlight for you why all four of those types of prayer are helpful and necessary in order to conform our will to the will of God. In order to give up that willfulness. We begin with adoration. If it’s a contest of the wills, we have to remind ourselves that God is God and we are not. And so we adore Him in His Majesty. We go to Him and we say, Lord, how wonderful that You are the creator, that You made me, that You sustain me that the whole world is in Your hands. How incredible that You are all powerful and all merciful and all loving. We adore Him as a reminder to us that He is more important. That if we ever find ourselves in conflict with Him, He wins. And we praise Him for that. And then we go to Him like the tax collector, in contrition. We say, Lord, how wonderful that you are God and how weak and corrupted I am, how sinful I am, how empty and bankrupt I am before you. I am sorry for anything that I have done to offend Your Majesty. That contrition is necessary because we have to empty ourselves before we can receive. And so we praise God. We empty ourselves, and then we move into thanksgiving.
Like I mentioned two weeks ago with the Discover Your Story card, reminding ourselves the ways in which God has blessed us, helps us develop that trust that He will bless us again. And so we say, how wonderful that you are God. I am sorry for my weakness and corruption. Thank you for blessing me anyway. Thank you for loving me anyway. Thank you for saving me even though I have done nothing to deserve that. Nothing to merit that. And then finally we go to Him in supplication. This is where we take our will in our hands and offer it to Him, because in supplication we tell Him what we want. Lord, these are the things that I want. These are the things that I desire. The things that are on my heart. Which is fine. Giving up our will doesn’t mean hiding our will from God. It means giving Him everything, giving Him our heart, the deepest desires of our heart and saying, Lord, help me understand these desires. Purify these desires. These are the things I want. And if it’s Your will, please give them to me. But if it’s not Your will, help me to know that. Help me to know whether these are the things that You want for me. And if they’re not, change my heart. Give me a will that is yours. Thy will be done. My friends, I grew up American, so I can only speak to the American experience, but I find that I and our people are extremely willful.
We’re taught to valorize that. We’re taught to honor and celebrate the people who go for and get what they want by sheer force of will. It’s that sort of Western mentality. I am rough and I am gruff and I am rugged, and I will get what I want by gritting my teeth and putting my head down and working for it. And there is a beauty to that. There is a beauty to our national genius in that. But when it comes to God, that can’t be us. And I find I need extra work to give up my willfulness, to give up the things that I demand as opposed to and contrary to God. And so I have to sit with the Lord every day, and I have to allow Him to drip on me like water dripping out a cave slowly day by day, chipping away at my will, making me less willful, less demanding, more suppliant to His will, more reliant on Him. That daily time with the Lord is absolutely necessary. If anything is going to put us in danger of separation from God and this life, and in the next, it’s our pridefulness and our will. But sitting with the Lord, receiving His will every day and allowing Him to change us is in that that we will find justification and salvation.
Fr. Moore 