Oculi nostri ad Dominum Deum nostrum

Meditations for Priests

"OCULI NOSTRI AD DOMINUM DEUM NOSTRUM"

The New Year dawns and we scan the horizon wistfully: what will it bring us? Forecasts, guesses, dreams as to coming events, make us perhaps sway from hope to fear, from anxiety to buoyancy. . .All rather vain and profitless: God keeps His secret. One thing only we know for certain: whatever is to happen will be willed or permitted by God: Divine Providence rules the world and all it contains. In this truth we find light and strength by which to steady our attitude towards the future: "Oculi nostri ad Dominum Deum nostrum". Let us take the coming year, and all it will bring us from the hands of God, and seek our sanctifica­tion in it - by trusting in God's Providence - by conforming ourselves to His holy will - by cooperating with His plans.

TRUST IN GOD'S PROVIDENCE

At a time of world-wide trouble and threats, we may find it a little difficult to think of the coming year in the usual terms: "a happy, a bright New Year ". Yet it is very necessary that we should preserve a calm and serene outlook: for the good of our own soul first, and then to radiate brightness around us. Nor is this difficult for the convinced Christian who trusts in Divine Providence.

We know that God is infinitely wise and powerful and good and loving, and that He is our Father. And from these divine attributes we deduce the sure fact of His Providence: God ordains all the circumstances of our life, and leads us through them - having always in view our true interests - to our eternal destiny of heaven.

If we could but walk in the light of these fundamental truths with a humble childlike heart, peace and happiness would be ours through all vicissitudes of life... Trials come, our prayers remain apparently unanswered, we may be puzzled by God's designs... Always we shall know that we are safe and secure, enfolded in our Father's love, our hand in His hand: "Dominus regit me, nihil mihi deerit."

* Let us examine how far our thoughts and our feelings are shaped by these views of faith.

Do we see the hand of God in the small, even the most trivial, details that crowd our own day, in the more important happenings around us, in the great events that shape the world?

Do we keep our mind serene and our heart strong, in the intimate conviction that, if our heavenly Father feeds the birds of the air and clothes the lilies of the field, much more will He look after each one of His children?

Let us ask from Our Lord that childlike trust, that practical belief in our Father's love, which He has so emphatically taught us, that we may say in truth, with St John: "Et nos cognovimus et credi­dimus caritati quam habet Deus in nobis."

CONFORMITY TO HIS HOLY' WILL

To take all the events of the year in such a spirit of faith, as coming from God's hands, would have yet another most sanctifying effect: it would make us conform ourselves whole-heartedly and constantly to the will of God. We know our perfection consists in the loving accomplishment of that will, and we are determined to aim at it always - in a general way: but in practice, how often we fail, because we do not detect the will of God in the details of our life.

If only we remembered that every moment of the day brings us a concrete manifestation of God's holy will, with what filial love and perfect submission would we not take everything: joys and sorrows, successes and failures, trials and consolations. We would welcome each one of them with the feelings of the Sacred Heart: "Ita, Pater, quoniam sic fuit placitum ante Te"; and of Mary: "Ecce ancilla Domini: fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum".

* On the threshold of the New Year let us establish ourselves firmly in that disposition, and, beforehand, whole­heartedly accept whatever God's Providence sends us...

As a spiritual writer suggests, let us fancy ourselves taking a large, blank sheet of paper; at the bottom, by way of signature, let us write a bold and decided amen; then hand over the paper to God, for Him to write down day by day, hour by hour, whatever He wills for us during the year. Everything then will come to us sealed - and sanctified - by our anticipated "Amen; yes, Father, so be it".

COOPERATING WITH HIS PLANS

While viewing the events of the coming year as the effects of God's Providence, we must not forget that for the execution of His plans God uses secondary causes. All men have their share - and their responsibility - in this; above all the priests: "ministri Christi et dispensatores myste­riorum Dei".

Let us not fail Christ: He too, the Good Shepherd, scans the horizon at the beginning of the New Year to see how His priests are going to lead His faithful flock to pastures green, how they will recall the erring sheep and use every means to bring to the fold those that are still without. Let Him not behold in that vision a single Christian decreasing in fervour, a single sinner remaining obdurate, a single pagan refusing the light, because of our lack of cooperation with His loving and merciful designs.

* Let us begin this year with something of the burning zeal expressed by Pius XII in the opening page of his first encyclical, and dedicate ourselves anew to "the King of kings and the Lord of lords", as a kind of "Introit prayer" to the New Year, making of our devotion to Him "the alpha and the omega of our aims, of our hopes, of our teaching, of our activity, of our patience, of our sufferings, by consecrating them all to the spread of the Kingdom of Christ".

"Largire nobis, quaesumus, Domine, semper spiri­tum cogitandi quae recta sunt, propitius et agendi: ut, qui sine te esse non possumus, secundum te vivere valeamus. Per D.N.I.C." (8th Sunday after Pentecost).

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Adapted from Alter Christus, Meditations for Priests by F.X. L'Hoir, S.J. (1958)
Meditation 13.