Vigils Reading – Office for Vocations

A reading from “New Seeds of Contemplation” by

THOMAS MERTON

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Every moment and every event of a person’s life on earth plants

something in the soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds,

so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest

imperceptibly in the minds and wills of every individual. Most of these

unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, because people are not prepared to

receive them: for such seeds as these cannot spring up anywhere except in the

good soil of freedom, spontaneity and love.

This is no new idea. Christ in the parable of the sower long ago told us that

“The seed is the word of God.” We often think this applies only to the word of

the Gospel as formally preached in churches on Sundays. But every expression

of the will of God is in some sense a “word” of God and therefore a “seed” of new

life. The ever-changing reality in the midst of which we live should awaken us to

the possibility of an uninterrupted dialogue with God. By this I do not mean

continuous “talk,” or a frivolously conversational form of affective prayer which

is sometimes cultivated, but a dialogue of love and of choice. A dialogue of deep

wills.

In all the situations of life the “will of God” comes to us not merely as an

external dictate of impersonal law but above all as an interior invitation of

personal love. Too often the conventional conception of “God’s will” as a

sphinx-like and arbitrary force bearing down upon us with implacable hostility,

leads people to lose faith in a God they cannot find it possible to love.

Such a view of the divine will drives human weakness to despair and one

wonders if it is not, itself, often an expression of a despair too intolerable to be

admitted to conscious consideration. These arbitrary “dictates” of a

domineering and insensible Father are more often seeds of hatred than of love.

If that is our concept of the will of God, we cannot possibly seek the obscure and

intimate mystery of the encounter that takes place in contemplation. We will

desire only to fly as far as possible from Him and hide from His Face forever.

So much depends on our idea of God! Yet no idea of Him, however pure and

perfect, is adequate to express Him as He really is. Our idea of God tells us more

about ourselves than about Him. We must learn to realize that the love of God seeks

us in every situation, and seeks our good. His inscrutable love seeks our

awakening.