God’s Ways are not Our Ways

by Rev. Fr Michael Mary, C.SS.R.

In 1831 in Belgium, a young University student named Victor assisted at the triumphal entry of king Leopold I into the Capital. Leaning over a balcony, he watched the thrilled crowd pass by, he admired the pomp that Brussels brought out to worthily honour its first king; he heard with lively emotion the joyful quickstep of military music mixed with the acclamations and cheering of the people, the nobles and the clergy. It was a sublime spectacle, a truly magnificent occasion. As the procession passed the sounds of the enthusiasm of the people faded away and was succeeded by silence and the solitude of a now empty street. It was a silence in which God spoke to his soul and urged him to say interiorly to himself: “That splendid triumph lasted but an instant. In this world all is vanity. I want to serve the eternal cause and a king who will not pass away.”

The following year he entered the diocesan seminary to study for the priesthood. Here he began reading with delight the works of St Alphonsus particularly The Practise of the Love of God and The Glories of Mary. One day while meditating quietly on the thoughts of the holy Doctor on the invocation of the Blessed Virgin as “Gate of Heaven —Janua coeli” an interior voice echoed in his soul saying to him that the religious life would be for him the gate of Heaven. He never forgot it. One day after his ordination he made a visit to the Redemptorist monastery of Saint-Trond and as he knocked on the monastery gate his eyes beheld the inscription, written above it, saying in Latin: “Mother of God be the Gate of Heaven for all who enter here — Mater Dei, sis intranti janua coeli.” It was no coincidence, it was the call of God and he recognised that it was Mary who had conducted him to the gate of salvation. He entered the Redemptorists and became a simple religious then, successively, professor of Theology and Sacred Scripture, Rector of the Houses of Liege, Tournai and Brussels, Provincial Superior of Belgium, Bishop of Namur, Archbishop of Malines and the renowned Victor Cardinal Deschamps the indefatigable defender of Papal Infallibility at Vatican I, personal friend of Pope Pius IX. His life’s work as priest and missionary was described by Pope Leo XIII as having gone beyond the limits of any particular audience or any single nation to serve the common good of the Universal Church. Victor had heard the voice of God as it unfolded to him. Our Lady protected his vocation and everything went peacefully according to God’s plan. “God, His way is immaculate” [2 Kings XXII, 31].

Unfortunately many others have heard the call of God and have been stopped from following their holy inspirations by the well meaning interference of others; sometimes by the members of their own families and sometimes by the would-be spiritual directors they consulted, who instead of respecting the inspirations of God’s call have re-directed the soul according to their own human wishes or prejudices…For my thoughts are not your thoughts: nor your ways my ways, saith the Lord. [Isaias LV, 8]

Such an example is St Raymond of Penafort who was born in 1175. He became a priest and quickly became one of the learned men of the famous law-school of Bologna; he was appointed to the chair of canon law and, his reputation growing with the years, he came in time to be looked upon as the greatest canonist of his age. He led the comfortable and dignified life of a cathedral canon, when, almost at the age of 50, he astonished everybody by joining the newly founded Dominican Order. Why did he do it? The motive that led him to take this shocking step was not a mid-life crisis but rather the spirit of Christian chivalry — loyal and brave, proud and austere. The reason is that one of his penitents, feeling that he had a vocation for the Dominicans, came to the saint to ask his advice, and that this took the form of a categorical and peremptory disapproval of the proposed step. The would-be postulant submitted absolutely to his confessor’s direction. However, later on Raymond began to feel a certain remorse for having, as he so rightly judged, thwarted the Divine Will in connection with that soul. For my thoughts are not your thoughts... saith the Lord. Accordingly, Raymond proceeded to reverse the counsel he had given. But the penitent declared that he no longer felt any inclination to become a Dominican. The great saint was so deeply distressed by the thought of the injury he had unwittingly done that, in his great prudence, he came to the conclusion that he could repair it only by offering himself in the other’s place. He did so, and received the habit the year after St Dominic died. He lived his life as a Dominican in reparation for his bad advice.

We have a notable example of this kind of reparation in our own Congregation too. When the young Gabriel O’Farrell, was a student at Blackrock College, in Ireland he formed the resolution of joining the Redemptorists, and in due course communicated his intention to his elder brother, Thomas, then a priest of the diocese of Ardagh. But Thomas had other ideas. He wanted to enter religious life himself and was aspiring to a Dominican vocation. Hence, not respecting his brother’s inclinations, he decided to dissuade him from joining the Redemptorists and to join the Dominicans instead. For my thoughts are not your thoughts: nor your ways my ways, saith the Lord. Thomas was eloquent! Gabriel agreed, and then Thomas, troubled in conscience at the thought that he had committed an injustice, tried to persuade his brother to follow his original intention and join the Redemptorists. But no! Now his brother Gabriel was set on joining the Dominicans. He did. Fr Thomas failed. Still troubled in conscience, he made a retreat at the Cistercian monastery of Mount Melleray where he understood that the only way in which he could make adequate reparation for the injury he had done to God’s call to his brother was by becoming a Redemptorist himself, which he did. It is now 125 years ago, that one year after his profession as a Redemptorist, Fr Thomas O’Farrell was sent by his superiors as one of the pioneer Redemptorists to take the Order to Australia where they arrived on 31 March, 1882. In his own time, and for long after his death, Fr Thomas O’Farrell was considered the most eloquent preacher in Australia. He was an undaunted, zealous Missioner; a true son of St Alphonsus, who loved preaching to the abandoned people of the Australian outback; ‘The Coonabarabrannigans,’ as he called them. He founded the Order’s monastery in Ballarat and was the Third Superior of the Australian Foundation. After these years of his self-imposed ‘reparation’ he returned to Ireland with broken health and died at the Redemptorist monastery at Esker in 1912. His brother, Fr Gabriel, died as a faithful Dominican.

The call of God is a very sacred matter that is too often interfered with. May the examples of St Raymond and Fr Thomas O’Farrell be a warning to us to respect God’s inspirations when he calls souls to the religious and priestly life. And this respect must extend also to the matter of openness to the procreation of life. God calls souls to enter the world through the proper use of marriage. Contraception stands between God and that soul whom He has called to Heaven; it is a grave sin. Of course big families are beautiful and God is glorified by them. If Giacomo and Lapa di Benincasa had practised contraception after their tenth, sixteenth, or even eighteenth child the Church would not have the great St Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) who was the twenty-third of twenty-five children. She brought the Pope back from Avignon to Rome and was responsible for helping to bring to an end the great crisis in the Church of her time. Catherine was a gift from God to the Church and society. She was given only at the price of the fidelity of her good parents; such is the way of God. The crisis was great and the Church did not deserve Catherine without great sacrifice and fidelity in marriage. Her parents were faithful, marriage was respected, children were treasured and the twenty-third of their twenty-five darlings was the beloved spouse of Jesus Christ who died with the stigmata. May God continue to bless and protect large families and raise up from them nuns, monks, priests, bishops and new generations of faithful holy parents.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts: nor your ways my ways, saith the Lord.

“Shew, O Lord, Thy ways to me, and teach me Thy paths. Direct me in Thy truth and teach me; for Thou art God my saviour; and on Thee have I waited all the day long.” [Psalm XXIV, 4-5] †