This complete surrender of our “false selves” to God is exactly what Jesus meant in His first words of public ministry, when He said, “Reform your lives and believe in the gospel!” In total self surrender we re—form our thinking, willfulness, emotions, and behavior to conform them to Christ’s thinking, will, emotions, and behavior. And notice it requires one to “believe” in the gospel”, which is Jesus entire message. This belief, as we’ve seen, roots us firmly in the flower.
But surrendering our human will can be “very hard to do”.
The Stubborn Human Will
For help with our stubborn will, let us turn now to St. Theresa of Avila, doctor of the church, and reformer of the Carmelite order along with St. John of the Cross, from whom we heard earlier.
In what does the highest perfection consist?
Do not look for or expect to find it
in interior delights,
or in great raptures and visions,
or in the gift of prophecy,
but only in conforming our will
to the will of God.
Then there will be nothing
that God wills
that we do not will ourselves,
and with our whole will.
We will accept the bitter with the sweet,
knowing it to be the will of God.
For the raptures may pass,
leaving only scanty obedience to the will of God.
Self-will will remain, our soul joined to self-love
rather than to the will of God.
Choosing the will of God is very hard to do.
For not only must we choose
to do the will of God,
but we must be pleased with doing
that which, according to our nature,
may be in every way the opposite of
that which we would choose for ourselves
Certainly this is hard.
but love, if perfect
is strong enough to do it.
In love we forget our own pleasure
in order to please the God
who loves us so much.
St. Teresa of Avila
For Teresa, spiritual perfection requires using our free will to unite our will to God’s will. This means freely choosing the stem of the flower (God’s will), and freely choosing to not choose the things of “the world”, the stem of the weed, such as money, sex, power, control, winning, and “success”.
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