Making the Right Choices
Web Posted: October 18, 2004
It is mid-semester, and we at Marquette are moving full-force through a
busy academic year. Universities are places that teem with life and are thus
full of choices – which course to take, which extracurriculars to participate
in, which friends to choose. One look at the campus calendar shows a dizzying
array of options for students, faculty and staff. Beyond choices about how
and with whom to spend our time, we are also faced with decisions about what
path we are choosing for our lives and whom we are becoming as a student, teacher,
friend or colleague.
St. Ignatius was well aware of how confusing it can be
to make good, faithful choices. At the beginning of the Spiritual Exercises,
he sets a context (called
the “Principle and Foundation”) for making choices that are free
and that lead us toward God:
God who loves us creates us and wants to share
life with us forever. Our love response takes shape in our praise and honor
and service of the God
of our
life.
All the things in this world are also created because of God’s
love and they become a context of gifts, presented to us so that
we can know God more
easily and make a return of love more readily.
As a result, we show reverence
for all the gifts of creation and collaborate with God in using them
so that by being good stewards we develop as loving
persons in our care of God’s world and its development. But
if we abuse any of these gifts of creation or, on the contrary,
take them
as the center
of our lives, we break our relationship with God and hinder our
growth as loving persons.
In everyday life, then, we must hold ourselves in
balance before all created gifts insofar as we have a choice
and are not bound by some
responsibility. We should not fix our desires on health or sickness,
wealth or poverty,
success or failure, a long life or a short one. For everything
has the potential
of calling forth in us a more loving response to our life forever
with God. Our
only desire and our one choice should be this: I want and I choose
what better leads to God’s deepening life in me.
— St. Ignatius, as paraphrased by David L. Fleming,
S.J.
In this busy time of year, let’s encourage each other to seek the balance
that “leads to God’s deepening life….” Blessed
autumn!
