Prayer and the Will of God by Dom Hubert Van Zeller

Author:Dom Hubert Van Zeller [Zeller, Dom Hubert Van]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781933184593
Publisher: Sophia Institute Press
Published: 2013-12-10T07:00:00+00:00

A certain saint (whose name I unfortunately forget) trained himself to repeat over and over again, hundreds of times a day, the clause from the Our Father “Thy will be done.” This practice he regarded not as a devotion but as a necessity, for whenever he left off, he was assailed by the most urgent temptations against faith, chastity, and hope. As time went by, he found himself reduced to a state of extreme nervous tension, rattling off ever faster and faster “Thy will be done,” until he began to realize that there was an essential connection between the content of his prayer and the unsuspected nature of his temptation. Could it not be said that the Father’s will was being done when temptation assaulted his soul?

On the showing of St. James’s letter, this would seem to be the case. “Count it all joy when you fall into diverse temptations, knowing that the trying of your faith works patience . . . blessed is the man who endures temptation, for when he has been proved, he will receive the crown of life which God has promised to them that love him.”32 Even if he could not go so far as to count it all joy when the attacks were raging, he could at least acknowledge the permissive and providential will of God. For an investigation of this aspect of God’s will, we shall need a separate chapter. It is a pity I cannot recall the identity of the saint referred to; he would surely come in useful to many. Anyway, he bears out in his experience the point we have been trying to make in this chapter.

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