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The other day, my priest told me in passing that he had just returned from the wedding of another priest’s daughter. The groom, too, was a priest’s kid. My reaction is typical: I was depressed. This shows just how deeply selfish I am. Someone tells me about a wonderful, joyous event, a cause for universal celebration, and I react with sadness because I’m not the one being married.
Ultimately, selfishness grows out of pride. I deserve to be married because I’m so special. Furthermore, I am deprived by not being married to someone perfect and wonderful. As we say in the Navy, “Negative, shipmate.” You are exactly where God intends for you to be.
“Godliness with contentment is great gain,” the Apostle tells St. Timothy, warning him against those who use godliness as a pretext for financial profit. However, contentment in general has been a foundational virtue of the Christian ascetical tradition since the first century. Our Lord said to St. Peter, “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me.” Do not worry about others, nor about what will come, follow the Lord without reservation.
More recently, the Priest Alexander Elchaninov wrote in The Diary of a Russian Priest:
Our continual mistake is that we do not concentrate upon the present day, the actual hour, of our life; we live in the past or in the future; we are continually expecting the coming of some special moment when our life will unfold itself in its full significance. And we do not notice that life is flowing like water through our fingers, sifting like precious grain from a loosely fastened bag.
Constantly, each day, each hour, God is sending us people, circumstances, tasks, which should mark the beginning of our renewal; yet we pay them no attention, and thus continually we resist God’s will for us. Indeed, how can God help us? Only by sending us in our daily life certain people, and certain coincidences of circumstance. If we accepted every hour of our life as the hour of God’s will for us, as the decisive, most important, unique hour of our life — what sources of joy, love, strength, as yet hidden from us, would spring from the depths of our soul!
Let us then be serious in our attitude towards each person we meet in our life, towards every opportunity of performing a good deed; be sure that you will then fulfill God’s will for you in these very circumstances, on that very day, in that very hour. (Quoted in “The Handicapped Convert” by Priest Joseph Huneycutt)
I read that quote on Laura’s Front Porch recently, perhaps just after my pity party over the wedding that was not mine. God has been trying to convince me of this attitude for many years now. It is funny how some things require a slow, gentle drilling until they finally penetrate my proud heart which thinks itself wise.
