Making the Most of My Life

“It is too little, the Lord says, for you to be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob…”  “I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”   We live in a world with a lot of needs, a lot of big problems.  How can you make the best possible use of the limited time you have here on earth, make the best possible use of your own life here on this earth?  Then this is an important question.  Whatever stage we are in our life, and if for those who are younger, it’s a great time to be asking that question.  What’s the best use I can make of my life here on this earth?  And there’s a lot of advice on that subject.  There’s a lot of people have a lot of different opinions, give a lot of advice.  But the one person who knows the best, who’s used His life to the maximum is Jesus Christ.  And so, what can we learn from Him and what was the key act, He made?  The key act He made was coming into this world, because it’s an act that all of us can make.  And in fact, I’m going to invite you today, in this Mass, and in the privacy of your own heart, to make that act, that key act.  As the letter to the Hebrew says, “When Christ came into the world, He said,” What?  What do you think Christ said, when He came into the world?   The response that letter to the Hebrews gives is taken from the psalm that we heard today.  In fact, the key phrase was the phrase that we chanted today.  “Here I am, Lord, I come to do Your will.”   I come to do Your will.  And that act, that simple, difficult, transcendent act, is what makes all the difference.  Have you said that to the Lord, have you made that act?  And if you have, today is an opportunity to renew it, if you haven’t, today is an opportunity to make it.  Because it makes all the difference.  I come to do Your will.  Satan, you know, who was Lucifer, the most intelligent, the most powerful, the most glorious of all the angels, because of the gifts God had given him, he decided that he wanted to do his own will.  And the disasters that resulted from that are still going on, and that has contaminated us too.  We have that spirit, that spirit of sin, that spirit of Satan in us, which wants to do my own will, in opposition to God. And the results also are disastrous, we’ve all experienced it but Jesus, who is the strongest, the wisest, the most intelligent, who is God Himself.  If anybody could say, I’m going to do my own will, because My will is better than anybody else’s, and I deserve it, if anyone could say that, it’s Jesus.  But He was the very Son of God, God from God, when He came into the world, He said, I come to do Your will.  Think of that.  How much we want to do my will, my own will, me, little human wants to do my will, and Jesus, who is God Himself, says to the Father, I come to do Your will.  One advantage Jesus has over us is His Father, but one advantage, He knows the Father, He knows the Father very, very well, so He’s not afraid of the Father, He doesn’t think that He needs to protect Himself from the Father.  He doesn’t think that He needs to kind of grab His independence away from His Father.  He knows that all His happiness is in the Father, so He’s not seeking to separate Himself from the Father, all He wants is union with the Father.  I want to continue on this topic, which kind of is a continuation of the topic, we’re talking about in recent weeks. Is this an easy path?  No, it’s not easy, and the path that this is, is the path of Jesus.  And we know that that path is the path which involves a lot of persecution, a path that involves crucifixion, which led Him to glory forever.  And so, this path of following God, I wish I could say it’s easy, but it can be very obscure, very hard, very painful in our short time on this earth, just to be realistic.  But God only asks us the suffering that is necessary for a greater good.  Say, for instance, take the example of a very good surgeon, a very good surgeon, when he cuts, he still cuts, and a cut still hurts.  But he only cut the minimum necessary for a greater good, for a greater good view, because he’s doing it out of love for you.  And so, God’s cuts still hurt, and they can hurt very much, but it’s only the minimum necessary.  He doesn’t do it out of wanting to hurt us, but only the minimum necessary for a greater good for us.  But this requires a lot of trust, a big act of faith.  It’s very difficult for us to make that act of faith, and if we can’t make that act of faith total, we can at least begin.  Lord, I want to do Your will, I’m trying, help me to want to do Your will.  What is God’s will for you? We don’t like that question because we have the experience of people who tried to impose their own will on us, who want to use us for their own goals.  But God’s not like that, God’s the one person who doesn’t need us at all, in the sense that there’s nothing we can do that He couldn’t have done Himself, so He didn’t create us to use us.  God’s will is not to use us for His own goals. God created us so that you could share His happiness.  He was so happy that He wanted you to share His happiness and you didn’t even exist.  So, you cannot complain if you didn’t, but He created you to share His happiness.  So, He created you for union with Him, that you could share in His work, that you could have the glory of sharing in His work of leading other souls to happiness, to heaven.  So, His will for you is your glorification, your happiness, your divine happiness, beatitude.  And so, God’s will for you is nothing other than the path to infinite happiness, infinite glory.  God’s will for you is nothing for us to be afraid of, even though the path is hard on this earth, but it’s the path to happiness.  So that’s good, that gives us a general guideline, but what about determining, finding my own particular specific path, because you have to make a lot of decisions.  How are you going to discover your own specific path?  And so, God doesn’t impose a path on us, but what He does do, which is something no one else can do.  He can reveal to you the reason, the specific purpose, the specific mission that you were made for, that you are perfectly made for. There’s a lot of things that I’m not very good at, a lot of things.  But there’s one thing that I can do better than anybody else, and that’s fulfill the purpose that He created me specifically for.  So, we’re not very good at doing other people’s missions.  But you’re better than anyone else at fulfilling your particular mission, because God gives you this specific guide.  He gives you the thing that no one else can do.  Other people can ask you to do things, but what God can do is not only ask you to do something, but give you the grace that you need to do that.  He doesn’t call you to do something without making available the grace for that path.  So, take an example that St. Paul uses, the body, the different parts of the body. And say one part of the body says, “I wish I was like an arm or leg, something big and strong and impressive.  I’m just small, delicate.  And then that little part discovers that it can do something that no other part can do.  It can see, it can see, it can see things which are 1000s, and 1000s, millions even miles away.   It can receive, it can receive light, and all the information, all the beauty that comes from light, that little part, which is called the eye.  Or say another part says, I wish I was like the eyes, so sensitive and fine.  But I’m basically just a pump, and all I do all the time is just pump. That’s not very exciting.  But then the pump discovers that it’s the heart, and it’s essential for everything else to keep working.  Or say the thyroid gland, not a very exciting thing, maybe to be a thyroid gland.  It says, nobody ever notices me, nobody even thinks about me except when things go wrong, right?  And then they say I didn’t even know I had a thyroid gland until it stopped working. But then you discover how important it is for everything in your body. Things that people don’t even notice, but it’s so important for everything.  And so, all of these different parts have their own function, and so they’re made very, very differently. Their structured very, very different because they have different roles.  They can’t do someone else’s part very well, but they can do better than anyone else their part.  The thyroid gland won’t be a very good eye, it won’t be a very good heart, it won’t be a very good stomach, it won’t be a very good hand, but it will be better than anything else at being a thyroid gland.  And so, each one of us has our own particular mission from the Lord.  And so instead of trying to be someone else, we’re not very good at being someone else.  And we read about a saint and the saint did all these things and we think we can never do that.  But you’re not called to do what that saint did, your call to imitate that saint, and doing, you doing God’s will, in your path as they did God’s Will on their path.  And one of the advantages of doing God’s will is that, instead of fighting the circumstances in our life, we realize that all the circumstances in our life can contribute to my special path. As St. Paul says, “God makes all things work to the good for those who love Him,” all things.  And so, we can ask why I was born now, why was I born in such a such a place, why was I born in such a such a family, all the circumstances of my life.  When we offer those to God and seek His will, He can make all of those work for His good.  I mean, say someone like Mary Magdalene, who committed grave sins, when she turned to the Lord, God even used her sins, both to inspire her to a greater love and to help her be an example to inspire others to conversion.  Or someone like St. Paul who had been a persecutor of Christians, and he caused a lot of pain.  But God even used that to help him become an example, the greatest example of faith in Jesus.  It was the faith in Jesus and not the fulfillment of the of the law which saves.  And so, when we begin to follow God’s will, when we choose God’s will, instead of fighting the divine current of God’s designs which run through all of history, we enter into that great flow of God’s saving designs, and something mysterious happens.  When we choose God’s will, a lot of the exterior circumstances in our life may be the same, but it’s like, there’s a new depth, because we’re beginning to not just live on the surface but live the divine mystery.  I mean, say someone like St. Joseph or our Blessed Mother, a lot of what they were doing everyday was very, very simple, the same simple things that all their neighbors were doing.  But even those simple things were taking on a divine depth because they were living it, in God’s will.  And so, this is an opportunity, as we see Jesus beginning His public ministry, in His Baptism, this is an opportunity for each one of us, for you, to embrace your particular mission and God’s plan.  It’s hard, but you’re not alone.  To do that you have the Holy Spirit with you, helping you.  And so, we ask the Holy Spirit to help us, we ask our Blessed Mother, her great example, “behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me, according to Your will.”  And so, with our Blessed Mother, in the Holy Spirit, if you’d like to, you could close your eyes now and make that act in the secret of your heart, no one will know except the Lord that you make that act or renew that act today.  Now in this Mass and in a moment of Holy Communion, “Here I am Lord, I come to do your will.”