How do we do what God wants . . ?

In the Sermon which forms the Second Lesson in this morning’s Office of Readings, S. Charles Borromeo suggests that - if we want help in our spiritual lives - ‘the Lord God has given us the means to find it easily’.

The means which he gives us is perhaps slightly surprising, though : it is to not involve ourselves in things which may distract us, but instead to focus on God’s will for us, and to meditate upon that ‘before, during, and after everything we do’; and he tells us this because by it‘we can easily overcome the countless difficulties we have to face day after day, which, after all, are part of our work’; and we do this, he says, because ‘in meditation we find the strength to bring Christ to birth in ourselves and in other men’.

A salutary thought for all of us : to need to focus on what God wants, not on what we think may be helpful, and by focussing on God be certain that He will provide us with the means, and the energy, to achieve His will.