Today, I'm trying to finalize some of the plans for my trip to Italy and France: 19-ish days on pilgrimage to see as many of the holy and beautiful sites and cities that the two have to offer. I say 19-ish because I began to read back through my flight itinerary and I noticed a small highlighted section that read "You saved money by choosing an alternate date flight." I scanned over the flight details time after time before selecting the flight, only to find now that I must have opted in for a discount option to move my return flight forward a day. The result is I miss one of the days of the Meeting in Rimini, the conference for Communion and Liberation that I was partly centering my trip around.
So what? I miss one day of a conference, while still spending 18 days in France and Italy. I'll get over my neglect and carelessness in choosing my flight, but this experience returned me to a topic I have been contemplating the past several weeks: the consideration that all of reality is positive. This is an idea that Father Giussani of Communion and Liberation has continually stressed and a concept verified by Romans Chapter 8 that I read earlier this week. Verse 28 states "We know that all things work for good for those who love God" and verse 31 follows with "If God is for us, who can be against us?" I would ask not only who, but what can be against us? If we are living an experience that God ordained to come to fruition, an experience that God not only knew would occur, but planned for it to occur, how can it not be for our good? The only way God's good can be undone in any event of life is if we, through our free will, succumb to temptation and sin and choose it to be so.
I have been trying to look at every part of my life in this regard, and while I can't always see the fullness of God's goodness in every situation, it usually sheds light on how God is working in my life through sacrifice and suffering. In looking at life with this in mind, it has also led me to question how I am meant to pray. So often, I find in my prayer and hear in others' prayer, requests for issues to end a certain way, or that God deliver a certain outcome in a struggle. Consequently, if all of reality is positive, if the given events have unfolded in accordance with God's plan, who are we to pray for a different reality? When I am praying for a sick loved one to be cured, for peace in the world, or a number of other good intentions, am I attempting to reduce God's plan?
You may say, as I initially did, that not all of reality is of God, and that the devil's influence negates some of the positivity in reality. However, is the devil's influence not only as powerful as God allows him to be? If God allowed it, are the devil's actions not paradoxically a part of God's plan? Again, "we know that all things work for good for those who love God.". If this verse is actually true, regardless of the reality we are facing, I must maintain that all of reality is inherently good because it was given by God.
Thus, what should I pray for if all of reality is inherently good? Shouldn't prayer essentially be that our will be conformed to that of God's? Similarly is it wrong to pray for our favored outcome of reality? We may participate in a reality that is not always pleasing to the flesh, but I have to believe that it most certainly is the reality that will form our soul to be what God desires, if we only choose that thy will be done. Please share your thoughts, as this is a topic I have been continually revisiting.
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