I sat next to my teenage daughter on a rainy afternoon in the Chick-fil-a drive-through, talking to her about the struggle and need to conform our will to God’s. I started with the theological explanations in a general way and then applied them to our own lives. Words then came out of my mouth that I’d never consciously considered. I said: “Two people are alive because I said yes to His plan. He used me to save two people’s lives.” I was stunned into teary silence. It is the truth, but I never completely realized it before.
The Prophet Isaiah says in 55:8-9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” The Lord’s plan is infinitely greater than our finite intellect can understand. We think as human beings do, as the Lord warned St. Peter in His rebuke of him denying the Cross. Our plans are too small and short-sighted.
This is the constant battle within each one of us. Deep down we think we know better than God. That’s why Invitro-Fertilization (IVF), transhumanism, abortion, euthanasia, and other technologies are widespread in our culture, even within the Church. We don’t want God’s plan. We want our own plan. We can’t grasp how our suffering can bring about something greater.
When I started losing unborn babies in 2010, I didn’t understand God’s plan at all. It was agony as I lost baby after baby. My heart was torn open to depths I didn’t think I would survive. I remember being laid out cruciform on the operating room table when I lost my third baby, Marie-Therese. I was bleeding to death because I hemorrhaged during the miscarriage. I didn’t understand God’s plan at all. I uttered a shock stricken and exhausted Hail Mary before the lights went out from the anesthesia. I still cry when I think about it. How could the Lord redeem the loss of five babies? How could this be His plan for my family?
For years, through repeated sufferings, which I shared last week, I didn’t understand. I was being shaped and molded by Christ. He had to realign my vision to His and still has to daily. He needed to open me up to His plan over my own plan. He had to expand my heart to love in a greater capacity.
In the beautiful classic movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey’s vision has to be realigned through profound suffering. He comes to the edge of despair and considers ending his own life. George could not see how his life had had any impact or meaning. He thought he was missing out and had not truly lived. He saw his life as a failure.
As the angel reminds him of the worth of his life through a glimpse of his town without him ever existing, it becomes clear that George saved multiple people’s lives, kept countless families from homelessness or destitution, helped build the community, and had a beautiful family. His life was not small. It was of great importance.
The Lord has a plan that is so high above us that we cannot fathom it all. It’s as if we hold a puzzle piece, but we can’t see the completed puzzle. The problem is we want to see the completed puzzle. We want to grasp power and control. We want this life on our terms to our own detriment and the detriment of others.
Have we considered that God may need us to surrender to His plan to save someone else’s soul and/or life? I hadn’t fully considered it until the words left my mouth. There is a boy walking around who is now 9 years old who nearly died due to an abortion. His mother was being pressured by her best friend who had already had two abortions. I was sent in by God to help save that baby boy. I never got the biological son I prayed for. He died a few short weeks before I met this struggling mother. Instead of having my own son, the Lord asked me to save someone else’s son.
Years ago, a young person came into my life who needed spiritual guidance. When we met, we had no idea that they were demonically possessed and had been since childhood. The manifestations didn’t start for quite a while, but when they did, the Lord asked me to fight tooth and nail to get them to an exorcist for deliverance. This person nearly died on multiple occasions as the demon repeatedly tempted them to despair and suicide attempts. By God’s grace, this person was liberated by a living saint on the spot. The startling realization came to me in this conversation with my daughter that, had I not answered His call, this person would still be possessed or probably dead.
This realization is not ultimately about me. I am a sinner. Anyone could have done what I was asked by God to do, and God could have saved the lives of these two people without me. The point is that God’s plan is so much higher than I could have imagined. When I lay sobbing in agonized grief with each loss of my five babies, I didn’t grasp that the Lord would redeem my suffering. I didn’t know He would use me in a different way, not because I’m particularly holy—I’m not—but because that was His plan all along.
Every one of us has a story and mission in God’s Divine Plan. We are George Bailey in different ways. There are souls entrusted to you that the Lord is asking you to sacrifice for and to love. There is suffering you are enduring right now, in the past, or in the future that will be redeemed by Christ in some way that is in accordance with His plan for saving souls.
On my final day of Catholic Campus Ministry (CCM), I sat on a restaurant patio with four of my college students. The topic of the mystery of God’s plan in suffering came up. I looked at all of them and said, “I wouldn’t be sitting here with all of you if I hadn’t lost my five babies. It doesn’t mean that I don’t miss them or that it still doesn’t hurt, but it means that the Lord redeemed my suffering through ministering to each one of you.” The same is true for the priests and seminarians I have ministered to, and the other people along the way.
The Lord has a mission for each one of us. To live that mission, we must surrender our own plans repeatedly. We have to allow the Lord to heal our blindness and confusion. We must let Him penetrate the depths of our hearts with His love. Through that deeper encounter with His love, we will be open to His Divine Plan. We will be called to help save souls and lives.
One of the greatest misunderstandings of our day is spiritual versus material goods. We have a priest shortage because we no longer understand God’s plan. We no longer seek to understand His ways. We want the ways of the world. We have forgotten that spiritual goods are higher and greater in the hierarchical structure of reality in God’s plan.
A man called to be a priest has the potential by God’s grace to save tens of thousands of souls. He becomes the spiritual father to thousands over the course of his life, or even millions, if he becomes a bishop. His spiritual paternity is higher than natural paternity because his fatherhood begins fully in baptism when souls become spiritual sons and daughters of Our Heavenly Father and, by extension, the priest’s spiritual children.
Spiritual generation is higher because it leads to heaven and union with God while natural generation does not lead to eternal life apart from spiritual generation. A priest’s spiritual children are given the promises of eternal life, the sacraments, and communion with the Most Holy Trinity. A natural father can choose to refuse the waters of baptism for his child and become a stumbling block to their eternal salvation. The priest stands in the breach to save souls. His fatherhood is ordered to heaven.
In our fallen human nature, this can be difficult to grasp. A father and mother can struggle to relinquish their control and grasp on their desire for worldly success or grandchildren for their son to the detriment of the countless souls Christ wants to save through a single priest. I know this struggle all too well because I wanted to give a biological son to the priesthood. That was a deep desire of my heart for which I prayed for years. The Lord said no. I had to relinquish my own will so He could give me spiritual sons in the priesthood. In fact, He’s given me more than the one biological son I prayed for. I had to give up a natural son for Christ to give me multiple spiritual priest sons. The same is true for a priest who gives up marriage for spiritual children.
The Lord will not be outdone in generosity. If we relinquish our will and plans to Him, He will give to us in abundance in ways we never expected. It is a difficult and painful process of purification to relinquish our desires and plans, but it helps to keep ever before us the God who loves us and who wants to use us to save others. We are not worthy of so great a gift, but He is gratuitous in His love.
Where is the Lord asking you to surrender your will to His? Give Him your yes. Trust Him. One day, He will show you how high His ways are, and you will praise Him for it despite the suffering along the way.
