S1 Ep. 24: The Plans We Make Versus the Path God Sets

Transcript

Carol Vassar:

From SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut, I'm Carol Vassar, and this is Living in Faith, Hope, and Love. Each week, our Pastor, Father Mark Suslenko, delves into Scripture, shares insights from the saints, prophets, and theologians, and discusses practical ways to cultivate faith, strengthen hope, and embody love in the world around us. Through his reflections and spiritual encouragement, this podcast aims to inspire you to live your Catholic faith with joy and purpose. Welcome. 

If you’re like most of us, your day is shaped by a schedule: a to-do list that reflects your priorities, responsibilities, and the expectations others place upon you. But what if, in the midst of all that planning, we’ve overlooked a more important agenda: God’s?

In today’s episode, we explore the powerful and often uncomfortable truth that the life we meticulously craft for ourselves may not be the one God envisions for us. Based on the Gospel of Luke, chapter 12, we’ll reflect on the spiritual traps of vanity and self-delusion, the distractions that keep us from becoming who God truly created us to be, and the soul work that invites us to bear lasting fruit, not for our own purposes, but for God's.

At the heart of it all is a simple yet profound invitation: to get out of the way, and let God be born in us.

Here's Father Mark.

“The Plans We Make Versus the Path God Sets,” by Father Mark S. Suslenko, Pastor, SS. Isidore and Maria Parish, Glastonbury, Connecticut

Father Mark Suslenko:

We all have plans and schedules. You may be even thinking about what you're going to do for the rest of the day and what you need to accomplish. We operate around our schedules, and those schedules reflect usually our vision for life and what people require of us: the to-do list of who we are.

But have we ever stepped back and realized that in the midst of all of our planning that God has a plan?

You see, sometimes in our spiritual lives, we reverse things a bit. We establish our agenda, and then we want God to comply with what we want him to do. So he's almost like our little person on the side who helps us get the to-do list done. So, if we wanna do A, B, and C, we ask God, please help me do A, B, and C. But we forget to think that, ultimately, it's not our plan that God is really concerned about. It's God's plan. That God has a bigger agenda in mind than just the smallness of this world. God sees the eternal picture. We see the finite picture.

We sometimes think that life is basically what it is here, that I have to preserve this at all costs. In reality, our life is just beginning here, and is extended and continuing well into eternity in God's mind. This is just the beginning of the bigger picture to come.

So, then, what is God's plan for you, for me, for the world?

What is God's plan? That we enter into the eternal life he promises for us and become the person that God created us to be. But in achieving that goal, we don't do it by just listening to what we want and what we desire. We have to tune in to God's plan and God's desire, the fruit that we bear, that we're being asked to cultivate and produce is not fruit that is just useful to us and stuff that is going to be utilized as we carry out the business of our lives, but it's fruit that is going to assist in God's plan, Go and bear fruit that will assist in God's plan.

Well, anyone who's done any gardening knows that when you plant a particular seed in the garden, it's going to become what that seed is. So, if you plant a pear seed, it's going to become a pear tree. If you put a tomato seed in the garden, it's gonna become a tomato plant. So, what seed is planted in our hearts that can then bear fruit? It's God's seed. God's seed. And what does God's seed planted in our heart become? God!

Has it ever occurred to us that we are called and destined to become God? God wants to be born in each one of us. He wants the seed of his presence to take root and flourish in us. That means the real task that is before us is what we can call soul work. Soul work. We really have to wrestle with a big question, and it's one that we get conflicting answers to when we ask it of ourselves. And the question is this: Who am I really? Who am I really? 

You see, because we come into the world, we're born into families, and those families tell us who we are. We go to get educated in school, and our instructors tell us who we are. We then become part of the workforce, and our work tells us who we are. Our families tell us who we are, and the world tells us who we are. So, we have all of these voices telling us who we are, how we are supposed to live our lives, and who we are supposed to become. Sometimes, we live our lives being what other people need us to be and not who we are.

But who am I really? In the essence of my soul, when God created me before I was even born, who am I? Who am I?

That soul work is uncovering some of this. But the problem is, as human beings, because we're limited and because we are born into a world that has weakness and sin, we can easily get distracted in answering that question of who am I really? Because sins can bring us away and distract us. They can consume us and bring us down a road we don't often want to go down. But there are two in particular that we really, really struggle with. The first is vanity, and the second is what we can call self-delusion, self-delusion. Vanity and self-delusion.

You know, God asks us to be stewards and caretakers of the world, of one another, and of ourselves. And so there is some prudent attention that has to be given to the person that I am. But it's so easy to be overly consumed with my physical self, and thus find ourselves pursuing something that's not real: self-delusion. We can easily be convinced that the path that we are choosing is the right one, that how I want to structure my life, what I need, what I want, what I desire, what those around me say is popular, what my social circle is claiming on me, what the world is telling me to do, and we can easily begin to live a lie. And that lie can, in little ways, almost seem true, because it makes sense to some degree. But then when it's really pierced and you peel everything away, the lie is revealed. So vanity and self-delusion.

We know this to be true, just look at our advertising industry, who wants to create the lie for us and focus us so much on ourselves. Almost every commercial or advertisement is, in some way, directed toward getting rid of these wrinkles that come with age. You walk into any store, CVS, Stop & Shop, the countless aisles that have all kinds of creams and all kinds of solutions to aging skin, appealing not just to women, but to men as well.

There's this idea that in order to be healthy and vibrant ,we have to somehow figure out the way of reversing the clock, of going back to some day earlier when things looked a little bit better than they do today. Well, here's the lie: once the jaw drops, it ain't going back. I don't care how much cream one uses. There's no hydraulic lift that we've invented yet that's going to put back what went somewhere else, and that is just the whole reality of aging.

But those kinds of things become extremely important to someone who has their eyes only fixed on here. You see, if you don't have the big picture, you're gonna fall victim to this vanity that is pervading in our society today, because you are going to want to preserve this as long as possible. You are going to create a self-diluted lie for yourself to live in, because this is all there is in the mind with no faith. But if you put it into perspective and extend it onward, it doesn't make sense anymore, does it?

We want to stay here, that's for sure. But there's nothing wrong with going there, too, when the time comes, because it's not loss, it's gain, it's not loss, it's gain.

And I was watching a YouTube video. I don't even know how it came across the screen. Those things just happen these days. And so it was about a woman. She was doing her YouTube thing, and she was there, and she looked like a very self-assertive, well-presented woman. And what caught my attention was that she said, This is not me. This is not me. So I said, well, I gotta watch this and see where this is going. This is not me. Well, if it's not you, then who is it? And she begins this process of putting on this new face. Through all these solutions and whatnot, and I didn't watch the whole thing. I got to the end. And so at the end, she's there and she looks like a different woman, well-presented, well put together, and she says, Now this is me.

And the words struck me. So, in other words, I have to do all of these things in order to become who I think I am. That how I started out wasn't good enough, that I had to change something. When we look in the mirror, are we good enough? Or do I look there and I see all of the effects of aging and get caught up in the tides of time, forgetting that in the whole business is a lot of goodness?

God wants us to get out of the way. Plain and simple. He wants us to get out of the way so that something can happen, so that he can be born in us, so that he can be born in us. The only way we bear good fruit is if God is born in us and we begin to work on God's agenda, on God's plan, on the bigger picture of who I am.

It's in doing that that we're going to find happiness. When we get out of God's way and God can be born in us. How do we know that that's happening? How do we know that we're being successful in bearing fruit in God being born in us? Well, it's quite simple, quite simple. I am no longer going to have to choose or want to do that which is good. It's going to happen naturally. It is no longer going to be a choice or a duty to love. It is going to be something that happens on its own. I am no longer going to have to choose to become virtuous. I will be virtuous in my actions automatically.

And Meister Eckhart, who was a mystic in the 13th century, said it best: if somebody asks you why you are doing the good thing that you are doing, it's not because I want to or because I have to. I do it because I do it. Think about that for a minute. I do it because I do it.

When we get ourselves to the point of living, virtuous, loving lives that flow naturally out of us, without effort, without thought, and without needing to put desire into it, then we are becoming, in every sense of the word, more like God. And that's how we can tell. That's how we can tell. So, God desperately wants to be born in us, and that is the task really: to get out of God's way and let God do what God does best. But we are frail and weak, are we not? And thus comes the wisdom of today's parable. We don't always bear the fruit that we know that we can. We don't always get it straight, and we fall into the traps like we always do. But God is patient. God is patient. He lets us have more time. And maybe next year we'll get it right. And if we don't do it next year, God will give us another year. He's never going to abandon us, and he is always waiting to allow his presence to take true root in each one of our hearts.

Carol Vassar:

Father Mark Suslenko is the pastor of SS. Isidore and Maria Parish in Glastonbury, Connecticut. If you like what you've heard today, please subscribe to Living in Faith, Hope, and Love on your favorite podcast app and take a moment to leave a review.

SS. Isidore and Maria is an active parish community, so whether you’re a long-time parishioner or are just getting to know us through this podcast, we welcome you to join us at Masses or any of our other community events and services. Visit our parish website - isidoreandmaria.org - for a full schedule of Masses, services and other happenings. That's isidoreandmaria.org. We're also active on Facebook and Instagram.

On behalf of Father Mark, I'm Carol Vassar, and we thank you for listening to this episode of Living in Faith, Hope, and Love.