Docility and good dispositions to meet God



Faith in the means the Lord gives us, works miracles. On one occasion the Lord asked a man to do something that he had ample experience that he could not do: to extend a "dry" hand, without movement. And docility, a sign of a working faith, made the miracle possible: he stretched it out and it remained as healthy as the other. Sometimes we will be asked to do things that we feel incapable of doing, but which will be possible if we allow God's grace to act in us. Grace that, very often, will come to us as a consequence of docility in spiritual direction. (a spiritual director who is in conformity with the doctrine of the Church).

The Lord asks us to have not only a human support, which would lead us to pessimism, but a supernatural confidence. He asks us to be supernaturally realistic, which is to count on Him, knowing that Jesus Christ continues to act in our lives.

Ten men find their healing because they are docile. Jesus Christ only says to them: "Go, show yourselves to the priests. And as they went, they were healed.

On another occasion, the Lord took pity on a beggar blind from birth and, St. John tells us, Jesus spat on the ground and made mud with the spittle, and with this mud he anointed his eyes and said to him: Go, wash in the pool of Siloam. The beggar did not hesitate a moment. So he went and washed there, and returned with sight.

"What an example of sure faith this blind man offers us! A living, working faith (...) What power did the water contain, so that by moistening the eyes they were healed? A mysterious eye-drop would have been more appropriate, a precious medicine prepared in the laboratory of a wise alchemist. But that man believes; he puts God's command into action, and returns with his eyes full of clarity".

Blindness, defects, weaknesses are evils that can be remedied. We can do nothing, but Jesus Christ is omnipotent. The water in that pool remained water, and the mud, mud. But the blind man regained his sight, and later, moreover, a more lively faith in the Lord. And so, so many times throughout the Gospel, we are shown the faith of those who treat Jesus. Without docility, spiritual direction would be fruitless. And he cannot be docile who insists on being stubborn, obstinate, incapable of assimilating an idea different from the one he already has or from the one dictated to him by a negative experience because he did not count on the help of grace. The proud person is incapable of being docile, because in order to learn we must be convinced that there are still things we do not know and that it is necessary for someone to teach us. And to improve spiritually, we must be convinced that we are not as good as God expects us to be.

In matters of our own inner life we must be forewarned with a prudent distrust of our own judgment, in order to be able to accept another criterion different or opposite to our own. And we will let God make us and remake us through events and inspirations, through the lights received in spiritual direction. With the docility of clay in the hands of the potter. Without putting up resistance, with supernatural vision, hearing Christ in that person. Thus Holy Scripture tells us: I went down to the potter's house and found that he was working on the wheel. And the earthen vessel which he was making fell apart in his hands; and immediately he fashioned another vessel out of the same clay, just as he pleased (...). Know that what the clay is in the hands of the potter, that is what you are in my hands. Availability, docility, letting ourselves be made and remade by God as often as necessary. This can be the purpose of our prayer today, which we will carry out with Our Lady's help.



Habla con Dios