Patient Endurance

 

 

We experience daily just how difficult it is to promote the kingdom of God in our personal lives by fulfilling his will in every respect. No one who has tried seriously to live each day in this way will say it is an easy task. It can only be done with the help of God’s grace. That grace is always given to us, but we must learn to recognize it in the people and circum­stances presented to us by God’s providence, in the thoughts and inspirations that tug at our minds and our hearts.

 

We know that we do not always respond to God’s grace, for his grace always demands of us sacrifice, renunciation of self-will, effort, and an untir­ing spirit of dedication – and the practice of these things does not come easily to the young, or the tired adult, or the old. Yet that is what the kingdom of God is all about.

 

Knowing how little of grace is accepted and real­ized in our own personal lives, we can imagine how much of his grace is spurned or rejected by those around us. In this way we come to understand, too, why there yet exists so much evil, sin, violence, wars, hatred, immorality, persecution of religion, and denial even of God himself in the world today. These things must follow, so long as men refuse to accept God’s grace and do his will. The kingdom of God, reintro­duced among men by the Incarnation of Christ ­who came to set us a most perfect example of a man totally dedicated in all things and at all times to the will of the Father – cannot and will not be established until all men live each day of their lives according to his example.

 

FATHER WALTER J. CISZEK, S.J.