Give Up Your Will
From” Freedom from Sinful Thoughts” By J. Heinrich Arnold
Nothing but the giving up of his will makes a true
man. This alone is
the perfect and true will,so that one enters into
God’s will and is
without self-will. For the whole perfection of
man’s will means being
in harmony with the divine will, by willing what
God wills. At the
time when the angel appeared to Mary, nothing she
had ever done would
have made her the mother of Jesus; but as soon as
she gave up her
will, at that same hour she truly became mother of
the Eternal Word
and conceived Jesus. God has never given himself
(nor will he ever
give himself) to an alien will. Only where he
finds his will does he
impart and leave himself, with all that he is.
This is true inner
detachment. Then the Spirit stands immovable in
the face of everything
that befalls it, whether it is good or bad, honor
or disgrace or
calumny, just as a broad mountain stands immovable
in the face of a
little breeze. The just man hungers and thirsts so
very much for the
will of God, and it pleases him so much, that he
wishes for nothing
else and desires nothing different from what God
decrees for him. If
God’s will were to please you in this way, you
would feel just as if
you were in heaven, regardless of what happens or
does not happen to
you. But those who desire something different from
God’s will get what
they deserve: they are always in misery and
trouble; people do them a
great deal of violence and injury, and they suffer
in every way
Anyone who by God’s grace unites his will purely
and completely with
God’s will has no need other than to say in ardent
longing: “Lord,
show me what thy dearest will is, and give me
strength to do it!” And
God will do this, as truly as he lives, and to
such a one he will give
in great abundance and all perfection.
Whatever is true, noble, right, or pure; whatever
is lovely,
admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy – think on
such things… And the
God of peace will be with you. (Phil. 4:8–9)
” Eckhardt tells us how a pure heart can become a
reality for each of
us: If God is to enter into you, your creaturely,
human nature must go
out of you. For only where this nature ends does
God begin. God does
not desire more of you than that you should go out
from yourself,
insofar as you are burdened with your human
nature, and let God be God
in you. The slightest image you have of the
creature that you are, is
as big as God: it keeps you away from your whole
God. To the extent
that such an image enters you, God must yield, and
to the extent that
this image goes out, God enters in. Self-love is
the root and cause of
all evil; it snatches away all that is good and
all that is perfect.
Therefore if the soul is to know God, it must also
forget itself and
lose itself. For as long as it sees itself, it
will not see and know
God. But when it loses itself for God’s sake and
leaves all things,
then it finds itself again in God because God
dawns upon it – and only
then does the soul know itself and all things in
God. Anyone who lets
go of things in their trivial and incidental
nature will possess them
in their pure, eternal nature. Whoever has let go
of them in their
lower nature, in which they are perishable, will
receive them again in
God, in whom they have their true being. It is an
unmistakable sign of
the light of grace when someone turns of his free
will away from the
transitory toward the highest good – God. Such a
soul does not seek
outside itself, but in the school of the heart,
for it knows that
there the Holy Spirit teaches it the things that
lead to its
blessedness… It tries to do all its works as
perfectly as possible in
accordance with God’s will…and strives always to
have a clear
conscience by disdaining worldly doings and loving
suffering, so that
grace may increase in it and the evil desire of
the flesh may decrease
|