God's Will
Because of the nature of our fallen state, humans are constantly making mistakes and doing what God does not want us to do. The nature of our choice to sin, though, is still a reflection of the goodness with which we were created; St. Thomas Aquinas described the choice to sin as a pursuit of a perceived good rather than an actual good. According to this analysis, it is completely against our nature to choose sin primarily because we know it is evil. Instead, we choose to do something evil because we may assume to get a perceived good out of it, usually in a sense of selfishness. While this can be a pretty sad way of coming to the realization of our sinfulness, there is still tremendous hope in the fact that our decision-making is ordered by the pursuit of goodness. If all humans were to seek after the greatest good for themselves, not in a selfish way but in a realistic way, we would all know that living according to the will of God is the only way to achieve the goodness we so naturally seek.
What is God’s will? How do we know if we are following God’s will instead of our own? This is a trap that many Christians may fall into: we might be drawn to pursue something out of a desire for its perceived good. This draw can be misidentified as a call from God when it is simply our own desire, and we then are tempted to consider it the “voice of the Holy Spirit”. While the Holy Spirit does stir up the faithful, God has a voice and has used that voice to indicate precisely what He desires of us; this voice was His Word made visible in the person of Jesus Christ. Through the Gospels, God very clearly told His people exactly what His will is, first to those He addressed directly, then to those who have belonged to His Church for the past 2000 years. It is these words that can be the only foundation for Christians to follow, and anything that deviates from Christ’s words is very clearly against the will of God. The Catholic Church would not have been able to sustain itself for the past two millennia had it followed the desires of its flawed human leaders rather than solely relying on the words of Christ and the Tradition that flowed from the Gospel message. Those who have tried to deviate from the message of Christ while citing an interior movement that they called the Holy Spirit have all come and gone; there will be more, but they will all experience the same fate. God’s will is not just something He wants us to follow; it is the only will that is permissible to be carried out completely and perfectly.
In today’s Gospel, we see a very unique expression of God’s will in two ways: a leper asks Christ to be healed, and Christ plainly states that he wills the man’s healing. There were probably many others afflicted with various ailments who were not healed during the time of Christ because he did not will it for whatever reason - maybe there was something valuable in living with their own ailment or he wanted to protect them from what may have lied in wait for them after a potential healing. But as Christ specifically asks the man not to share what happened, the man disobeys and spreads to anyone he encounters. This is perfectly indicative of sin as an action of pursuing perceived good; the man could not contain the goodness in his healing, but he disobeyed Christ. In the same way, we simply act against the will of God when we sin. This does not mean His will becomes corrupted, though; instead, He knows how we will act and has planned His will accordingly. Even when we sin against God, He extracts a greater good out of our disobedience. Don’t let it come to this. Sin is still sin, regardless of motive. Instead, seek after true goodness rather than your perceived goodness - follow the words of Christ.
Today's Readings:
