May 11, 2011
In Psalm 81, God is anxious for us to allow Him to take care of us. If only we would keep faith and trust in Him! He reminds us of all He has done and what He is capable of. “Open wide your mouth and I will fill it.” That is His promise to us.
Sadly, we are inclined to give up too easily on God and trust in our own ability to control our situations. We lose sight of God and allow fear to cloud our reason.
Many single Catholics struggle, almost daily, between knowing they should trust in God and leave the matter of their vocation to marriage in His capable hands, and despairing that it will never happen.
If we’re being honest, we would admit that our faith and trust in God on this matter is primarily intellectual. Where our faith really lies is with our own ability to make things happen to affect our bottom line for a future marriage.
The result is one failed relationship after another, and a good deal of interior hardship that weighs on our ability to maintain a perfect peace and joy.
We fail in our relationships and we struggle with unrest and loneliness in between relationships because we do not have faith nor trust in God. He has left us to our own designs.
Our own designs. What are they? They are the multiplicity of thoughts and actions that stem from our main design, following our own will. We are stubborn about our will. We like our will. We trust the plans we have in our will. We lack the humility to act appropriately in our lives in accordance with God’s will, which is the only way to effectively prepare for and live marital love.
It is no easy thing to stare in the face of God’s will and say yes. Original sin has secured ferocious pride in each of us that always seeks to take control. Humility should prompt us to allow God to be in control. But we are two-faced, hypocritical, and living a double standard. We don’t realize it because we are stubbornly living it without appropriate reflection on what God would want. And let’s face it, we all think we are pretty good people and don’t think ourselves capable of living a double standard. But we must become anxious to cast off our own will and our desire to control things.
Living this life for God in all things is the only way to be happy. Finding peace in our state is required. Being of service to God and our fellow man is required. Having genuine joy in all that happens is required.
So what are these failures of trust in God, and the double standards that confirm we are attached to our own will rather than God’s will? Here are a few considerations:
- Praying for a good a Catholic spouse while you lack qualities that can attract such a person, and choosing not to work on yourself.
- Going through the motions of living the faith, but still living in ways that contradict those pious activities.
- Pursuing activities and work situations that are not conducive to meeting a quality person.
- Desiring a good Catholic man or woman who practices their faith and lives purity while you are living impurely yourself.
- Repeating the same mistakes in your dating experiences instead of learning from them.
- Being quick to blame and find faults in the people God brings into your life.
- Never asking Jesus to enlighten you about your faults. You should be begging him to change you into the person your future spouse would be attracted to.
- Seeing marriage as something to please yourself rather than a vocation of service to God through another person, and therefore making your search for a suitable partner one based on selfish ambitions such as excessively attractive outward looks and body shape and romanticism and pleasure of every kind, instead of focusing on good character, capability of fulfilling marriage requirements and husband and wife roles, and parenting qualities.
- Giving up on someone too readily because of the misunderstanding that love is not there if you get hurt or you don’t feel loved. Experiences challenge you to step up in maturity rather than over-react and get easily discouraged. Love is fashioned through the fire of suffering.
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