Do You Know Where You Are Going?

Here is a prayer to accompany you on the journey.

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Thomas Merton

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Fr Noel Connelly of the Columbans wrote this:

Recently I was struck by the statement in Acts 15:28 “We and the Holy Spirit have agreed …”
I admired the audacity and the confidence of the statement. It came at the conclusion of the first Council of the Church, the Council of Jerusalem. The Apostles and elders were trying to decide how Jewish the new Greek Christians had to become. It was a very difficult question. Their whole understanding of God and what he wanted was at stake.

Another example was the conversion of Cornelius [Acts 10].
This story is misnamed because it is really Peter who is being converted. Cornelius was a just man and faith in Jesus came naturally to him. It was Peter who had to argue with his conscience and his God as to how this could be. Going to Cornelius’ house was against everything Peter had been taught was precious to God. But he also knew that the Holy Spirit was telling him that this was what God wanted. Eventually he baptised Cornelius, but when he returned to Jerusalem he was given a terrible time by the Jewish Christians. The Council of Jerusalem was largely provoked by incidents like this and by Paul’s outreach to the Gentiles.

We often claim that we are living at a point of history where old approved solutions do not seem to work anymore. It is true. We are living at a time when the old certainties have been eroded and the new solutions are not yet convincing enough. Many find they cannot rely on past certainties and have to struggle to find out what God is asking of them today.

I find consolation in the Acts of the Apostles. It is a book of searching. The early Christians could not rely on the past and they didn’t have clear instructions from Jesus. They didn’t even have the Gospels which were yet to be written. They had to read the signs of the times and trust in the Spirit. We too have to trust in the Spirit, stay with the questions, pray, and use our imaginations and intellects to find the way. Maybe then we will also be able to say with peace and confidence, "We and the Holy Spirit have agreed…. "

Fr Noel Connolly

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