“Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I come.”
A large billboard screen caught my attention while I was in Metro Manila traffic some weeks ago. It was a picture of our Lady of Guadalupe with these words written beneath it, “Life is much better when you pray the Holy Rosary.”
I felt consoled and I knew from experience that this statement was true. But I found myself asking why this statement was true. It is not true because we get everything that we ask for when we pray the Rosary. It is also not true because we have no more struggles, trials, failures, or temptations when we pray the Rosary.
But it is true because when we pray the Rosary, or any other prayer, with the right disposition, we do not only connect with God but we also grasp the divine purpose in every moment of our lives. We may not know the entire purpose of God at a given moment but we know enough to take the next step in faith and let the mysterious plan of God to unfold. Life truly becomes better when we live our lives a step at a time and by the grace of God according to God’s purpose.
The book of Job shows Job as a good, innocent, and faithful man who suddenly lost everything that he had. He lost his sons, daughters, property and he contacted a terrible skin disease. His three friends could not help him understand the misfortune and disaster that had befallen him. Because of this injustice in his life, he lost hope and no longer saw any meaning or purpose in life.
The lamentation of Job mirrors what we would say when we too faced trials and difficulties we could not explain, “So I have been assigned months of misery, and troubled nights are assigned to me…I am filled with restlessness until the dawn…My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle; they come to an end without hope. I shall never see happiness again.” (Job 7:3,4,6-7)
Job did not grasp then that God’s mysterious and beautiful purpose in his suffering was to prepare him to receive abundant blessings from God. Listen to how Job’s life ended, “And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his friends; and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before…And the Lord blessed the later days of Job more than his beginnings.” (Job 42:10,12)
God had a purpose of increased blessings for Job but he could not see this purpose in the time of his suffering. He experienced the immense blessings of God only when he took his eyes away from his sufferings and prayed for his friends as God had instructed him. His life became much better as he prayed and acted according to the divine purpose.
The Psalmist tells us, “The Lord heals the brokenhearted, and binds up all their wounds.” This is God’s unchanging purpose for us. But He fulfills this purpose in a very mysterious way, “Great is our Lord and mighty in power; to His wisdom there is not limit.”(Ps 147:3,5) We can never fathom the wisdom behind His mysterious and beautiful purpose for us in the things that we experience in life. We must connect with Him through prayer first so that we can discern that purpose, live accordingly, and so enter into that better life that He longs to give to us.
In Jesus Christ, God is offering us constant connection and loving contact with Him, “Through Christ we have gained access by faith to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God.”(Rom 5:2) Jesus Christ freely enters into our pains to heal us and bring meaning to our sufferings just as He freely entered the house of Simon’s mother in law to touch and to heal her and prepare her for service, “He approached, grasped her by the hand and helped her up. Then the fever left her and she waited on them.” Because He is so close to us now, we too can connect with Him anytime in prayer and bring to Him all our needs and all who are in need of His healing and liberating touch, “They brought to Him all who were ill or possessed by demons.”(Mk 1:29,32)
He makes life better for all who approach Him with the right disposition, “He cured many who were sick with various diseases and He drove out many demons.” He can do this because, through prayer, He remains in contact with His Father and the divine purpose at all times. When Simon pressed Him to remain in the place of success and fame, Jesus chose to move on so as to live in accord to the Father’s purpose, “Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I come.”(Mk 1:34,39) He always lived like this, seeing the purpose of His Father in all things, even during the climax of His Passion and death, “Shall I not drink the chalice that my Father has given me?”(Jn 18:11) He never lost the sense of the beauty of His earthly life, even if the shadow of the cross never lifted from His view.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, Jesus Christ enters into our lives to heal and to liberate us so that we too can live according to the Father’s purpose in each moments of our lives. There is a mysterious and beautiful purpose in all things that God wills and permits in our lives. There is divine purpose in our difficult relationships with loved ones, our ongoing struggles with sinful addictions, our pains and sufferings. There is a divine purpose in this Covid-19 pandemic and all the evils that we experience from it. There is also surely a divine purpose in the many painful scandals in the Church.
We can grasp this divine purpose in everything only when we begin to pray like Jesus. Like Jesus who gave up some hours of sleep at dawn so as to spend time with His Father in solitude, we too must be willing to give up something so as to connect deeply with God in prayer. We must be willing to give up certain comforts and securities, feelings of shame and unworthiness, hurt feelings, favorite pastimes and entertainments, the many distractions that keep us from facing reality, our sources of consolation that never cease disappointing us, etc.
Like Jesus, we too must be willing to go beyond praying only because we want to get something from God. We must begin to pray because we want to fulfill the divine purpose in our lives no matter the darkness that we are going through. We refuse to be driven by the desire to meet the expectations of all people but to fulfill the purpose for which we are created by God and for which we are gifted by God today.
When we begin to pray like Jesus and never cease to do so, we will surely connect with Him and the divine purpose. When we live our lives step by step in accordance with this divine purpose, life would surely be better for us.
Glory to Jesus!!! Honor to Mary!!!
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Photo by BOGUSŁAW NOWAK on Unsplash
