Key Advice from the Epiphany

See, darkness covers the earth. And thick clouds cover the peoples.  Darkness and thick clouds. And I think because of this darkness often people ask me the question, what should I do?  They come to me with all sorts of situations, often difficult situations, and ask me, what should I do?  And it’s a question we all face, whether it’s family situations, marriage situations, job situations, maybe buying a house, moving, maybe important decisions, which are going to affect our whole life, like, what career should I choose?  Should I get married?  How should I live a relationship? What’s my vocation?  So, a lot of important questions.  As I say that we all face a lot of times when people are sometimes situations after there’s just been a very bad thing happened, hard thing happened in our life.  And we’re wondering, what am I supposed to do?  And a lot of times, when people come to me asking these questions, my first reaction being, well, I don’t know. It’s hard to know, and a lot of these situations, but that’s not real helpful.  If I just respond that, and I think that this Feast today of the Epiphany, the example, the magi gives us a lot of guidance.  And I want to talk about that, I want to give an all-purpose response to what should I do, that you can use in any situation.  Anytime you have that question, what should I do?  So, this is all purpose together?  How can it be all purpose, and yet practical enough to be of some good and as different situations?  So that’s what I want to look at today. And one of the reasons we record these homilies is because a lot of times, I know that I’m covering material that it’s hard to, it’s hard to remember it all.  So, if you want to go back and listen to this, you can do so.  So, what should you do, in any situation?  Anytime you’re facing a question, what should I do?  I think there’s one key thing.  And I can’t remember what it is.  I think there’s one key thing.  And that key thing is to decide to seek God’s will, decide to seek God’s will.  That’s the key thing to do in any situation where you’re wondering, what should I do?  Decide to seek God’s will, as Jesus teaches us to pray, thy will be done.  Sometimes people will, well, why should I because God’s will be often hard, sometimes very hard, and mysterious.  But it’s what’s best for me and what’s best for everyone.  And by choosing that, you’re making an act of love.  Putting God first, you’re also making an act of trust in Him, trusting that His will is the best, even if we don’t always understand it.  And also, you’re trusting that He is going to guide you, that He is going to help you discover what that will is. And we sometimes wonder what can I do God’s will because God’s will can be very demanding.  But it is very demanding often time, but it also comes with His grace, with His help, because God’s will that vantage of God’s will, when you choose God’s will, you’re entering into this great current of God’s merciful designs.  Instead of trying to make your own way, you’re entering into the current, where He is, all because everything is made by Him.  You are created by Him. And so, you’re entering into the current of what you were made for, the grace that He made you for.  And we see that in the Magi, the Magi, I think, are a good example of that, of people who are seeking God’s will.  And so that leads them on this great adventure that then is very improbable, and it’s kind of like they say, finding a needle in the haystack.  You know, how are they going to find from far, far, far away?  How are they going to find the Savior, but by seeking God’s will, they are lead to this which makes changes their whole life?  We don’t know all the rest that happened in Magi, but how their own lives and how lives of how many people throughout generations were affected by that, but by their response, and for all eternity, their lives were changed because they were seeking God’s will.  And the gospel speaking about what Jesus said, what was not the gospel is the letter to the Hebrew says, what Jesus said, when He came into the world was celebrated His coming into the world.  What did he say?  He said, here I am, Lord, I come to do my will.  That’s Frank Sinatra sang famously, I did it my way.  Jesus didn’t say that. You said, I mean, we spent so much of our life trying to do our will.  And Jesus said, “I come to do your will.”  And that’s what our Blessed Mother said, as she prepared for this moment, “behold, the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me, according to your word,” not my will, your word.  So that’s the key decision we’re seeing, we’re seeing our Blessed Mother make, St. Joseph make, Jesus Himself make, that the Magi make, seeking God’s will.  And that’s the key orientation of our life, which is difficult, and each day, there’s all sorts of things trying to pull us away from that.  And so that’s the key decision to keep coming back.  Behold, I come to do your will.  But whenever I say that people say, Well, how do I know His will, right?  How do you know His will?  And we talked about listening to God. But then if I don’t hear anything, I try to listen.  But what is listening to God mean?  It doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re going to hear something, it means we’re trying to be attentive to all the different ways God communicates.  Because He communicates in many different ways.  And we’re going to see some examples of that.  So, listening to God means we’re trying to be attentive to His will and to the way He speaks, different ways He speaks to us.  Because many times when we’re trying to do God’s will. So that’s very clear, that’s the key thing to choose God’s will.  But many times, it’s the specifics are not very clear, and so sometimes we have to make a decision.  And it’s still not very clear.  But if you are seeking His will, you’re doing your part, you’re doing what you can, and the rest depends on Him.  It’s only He who can manifest what His will is.  What depends on you is to choose His will. But it’s up to Him how and when and how much He manifests His will.  And a lot of times, it’s pretty mysterious.  A lot of times we have to take a step without being completely sure. Is this God’s will or not?  I know, for instance, when we’re choosing when we’re beginning, for instance, the Mission of Divine Mercy, I thought that was what the Lord was calling us to do.  But I wasn’t completely sure.  And so, we take a couple of steps and try to be attentive for the signs or take another step and try to be attentive to the signs, they seem to want us to go forward, or the signs and we say, No, you’re on the wrong path, stop, go back.  And so, a lot of times, it’s not real clear, but if we’re doing the best we can for trying to do His will, that’s the best we can do.  And, as I say, often being, with that humility to review and seek the signs and be ready to rectify, if it’s not, if it turns out that’s not His path.  But the key thing is to choose His will. So, let’s look at the example of the Magi.  One thing we see with the Magi is that God often manifests, when God shows us well, oftentimes, He just gives me the light to take the step I need to take now.  And the comparison that comes to me is like when sometimes I’m driving in a place that I don’t know, and I’m using my phone for directions.  And you know, the phone is just telling you, the next step you had, so it’s like, you know, for the next two miles continue on this road.  And it doesn’t tell you the whole path. I mean, if you’re listening to it, if it doesn’t tell you whole path because you don’t need the whole path, and you wouldn’t remember the whole path.  And so, it’s so a lot of times, God is kind of like that.  He’s just telling us what we need to know now.  Then sometimes the phone will say what goes straight for, especially if you’re in Texas, they’ll say go straight for 60 miles. And then it stops talking to you for a while.  You think was that even still on? Because it doesn’t need to tell you any more information for a while, you just need to keep on going straight.  And so sometimes God’s like that, He’ll give us the information that we need at that time.  And sometimes we just need to keep on this path, and so He doesn’t need to give us any more indications.  And, you know, that was, for instance, what was like for the Mission of Divine Mercy.  And when we began, we didn’t know where we’re supposed to go. And first of all, the Lord led it. He didn’t say when we began to decide to begin it.  We looked a lot around maybe Monterrey, Mexico. And then that path closed and said, well, where are we going?  And so, I’ve often talked about the story.  But He didn’t say immediately go to a nice little place near Startzville, just south of Canyon Lake.  He led us first of all to New Braunfels, and then from there gradually, gradually giving us the step by step where we were supposed to go.  So, let’s look at this example here of the Magi.  First of all, God gives them, He guides them by a star. So, the star is way up in the air, everybody could see this star.  But not everybody was seeking God’s will.  So, the fact that they were seeking God’s will made them attentive to the signs.  There are a lot of people that said, oh, look at the star light, that’s interesting, wow, I wonder what that means.  But they but these Magi, when they were seeking God’s will, they sense that that star was God speaking to them, it was a sign from God speaking to them., And that’s one of the things that listening to God means, it means we’re trying to be attentive to all the different ways that God speaks. Here, He was speaking to them through something, an event that happened in nature, and they were paying attention when others weren’t.  And because they were seeking God’s will, they recognized the signs of God.  And God’s giving a lot of signs now. But if we’re not seeking His will, if we’re just trying to do our own will, we’re just trying to make our own will happen.  But if we’re seeking His will, that makes us attentive to the signs and recognizing when something is a sign.  So that’s the first step.  So that guides them for a lot of their journey. But then they get to Jerusalem, and that sign, that star disappears.  And so now they don’t know what to do.  Now, they don’t know.  So, what do they do?  They stop.  You know, sometimes I hear people telling me, you know, I really feel lost.  And I said, well, that might be a good thing, that you feel lost, because there’s a lot of people who are lost, but they don’t feel lost, so they keep on going, going.  And as St. Thomas Aquinas said, “the farther we run on a path, which is not God’s will, the farther we’re getting from where we should be.”  And there’s a lot of people in that situation, at least if you know that you’re lost, you stop, and you become attentive to find out, okay, well, where should I go?  And so that was their step, they had to stop.  And that stopping was part of God’s design, because that’s what led them to be there, and finally, how did God speak to them? They’re there, He spoke them in a different way, not through the star, but He spoke to them through other persons, and even someone as evil as King Herod, God even used him.  But more than King Herod, it was the scriptures, the prophetic texts of scriptures, which were speaking to them.  So now God’s giving them a light in a different way.  Now, it wasn’t just through the star, but it was also through a prophetic text of Scripture, God speaking, and prophetic ways through other people.  And so, then that guides them to start to continue their journey to Bethlehem.  And they’re at Bethlehem, and they meet Jesus.  And now, they need to go back.  And so normally, what would they do, they would just go back the same way they came.  But then God speaks to them now in a different way, a third way.  He speaks to them now, through a dream.  And a dream of speaking to them directly through a dream vision.  And this represents perhaps all the different ways that God can speak to our soul through like an interior message, an interior locution, a vision, an apparition, inspirations.  These are other ways that God can speak.  And since they’re attentive, since they’re seeking God’s will, they’re attentive to those dreams.  They don’t just dismiss their dreams.  I just had this crazy dream, so we should go back there a different way because of the king but I don’t believe in that.  No, because they were seeking God’s will, they paid attention, and they sense that that dream was God speaking to them.  So, this was a different way that God was speaking to them and guiding them. So, the key thing that they did was – they were seeking God’s will.  And because they were seeking God’s will, through all these different ways through the signs, through a message, and a prophetic passage of scripture, through this dream, all these different ways that God could lead them, and guide them.  So, to the question, what should I do?  In all these different situations, the key thing is to choose to seek God’s will.  I didn’t even say to choose to do God’s will. But at least to, because sometimes it’s not always clear, but at least to seek that is, we’re doing what we can if we’re seeking His will.  And then be attentive to all the different ways that He’s guiding us.  As the passage from Hebrew said, “When Jesus entered the world He said, “Behold, I have come to do your will oh God.”  And so right now in this Mass, you can make that act. And if you made it yesterday, it’s good to make it again today, of choosing His world choosing to seek His will.  Thy will be done. And so, with the Magi, with our Blessed Mother and St. Joseph, let us take a moment to choose to seek His will.  Thy will be done.