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Friday, September 9, 2022, 6:00 PMTheme - "Thy Will Be Done"
Retreat Leader - Steve Pugliese, S.J.
Co-Ed SIlent Retreat Weekend
Many people ask, what is God’s will for me? So many seem to find the answer to that question elusive. A much simpler question, however, with a much clearer answers is, what is not God’s will for me? That would seem to be a better place to begin. So many of us find ourselves falling into the same behaviors that we know very well cannot be God’s will for us. Things like judging others, being impatient and demanding, getting angry and acting out on it, feeling superior and haughty or petty and resentful, lying, failing to act with compassion, allowing addictive behaviors to continue, acting with arrogance or pride, feeling sorry for ourselves, blaming others (or God) and the list goes on and on.
Why is it that we seem so unable to break free of these things? Why do we find ourselves confessing the same things over and over year after year? Have we lost real faith in our ability to change or even in God’s power? What keeps us from actually doing God’s will? Could it be our misunderstanding of both what God’s will really is as well as who God is for us? Have we locked ourselves into ways of thinking and believing that do not either help us or put us in touch with the reality of God’s grace? Have we been trying to find God’s will by our own willpower alone, as if that were possible?
The true answer is that we need to let go of virtually everything we thought we knew about God and the spiritual life. Those ideas have not helped us to find freedom or God’s power to change us. We have put our faith and our trust in things that are not God.
Join us as we contemplate what it would take to finally encounter the living God and truly surrender ourselves to God’s will and what God’s will actually means. Far from something fearful and impossibly difficult, it is actually something quite effortless and joyful if we would only believe it. Jesus told us, “Take up my yoke and learn from me… and you will find rest…, for my yoke is easy and my burden light.” Our difficulty has simply been that we don’t really believe that because we’ve put our faith in other things, things that are not really of God. Admitting that and seeing it makes all the difference to our spiritual lives.
