Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [100]
Confidence in God is an indispensable condition for our transformation in Christ
We have seen in this chapter that confidence in God constitutes man’s adequate response to the omnipotence, the omniscience and the charity of God, as well as to the merciful word which God has addressed to every one of us. It constitutes our central response to the God of Revelation: the response we owe to Him, together with that of love and adoration. Further, it represents an indispensable condition of our transformation in Christ.
Without confidence in God, neither our readiness to change nor our critical self-knowledge are of any avail; without confidence in God, neither true contrition nor humility are possible.
Without that basic surrender to God which implies a cheerful reliance on Him, we could never advance along the path that leads to those goals. How could we risk that leap in the dark, the act of dying unto ourselves; how should we be ready to lose our souls, unless we knew that we were not to fall into the void but to be received by the mercy of God? How might we even dare to think of putting away the old man and becoming a new man, unless we relied on the message: “This is the will of God, your sanctification” (1 Thess. 4:3)? How could we bear the sight of our wretchedness and weakness, and in spite of our ever-recurrent relapses keep out discouragement, unless we were certain that God’s mercy is infinite?—so that we may say with Thomas of Celano (in the Dies Irae): “Thou who hast absolved Mary and granted the thief’s prayer, hast given hope also to me.”
Confidence in God is an essential trait of holiness
Not only is confidence in God a necessary condition of our transformation in Christ; in its perfection it is itself an integrating part thereof, an essential trait of holiness. Complete, unreserved, victorious confidence in God is a fruit of Faith, Hope and Charity. It is a manifest sign of our being dead unto ourselves and living in and from God; a mark of him that has “put on the new man, who according to God is created in justice and holiness of truth” (Eph. 4:24). And from confidence in God, again, issue the triumphant freedom of the saint, and the peace of Christ, which the world cannot give us.
But, rudimentary as its initial act must be if compared with its final perfection, confidence in God is what we need as a supreme guide throughout the entire course of life with its turmoils and vicissitudes, its temptations and trials; what we need as a governing faith all along our path, from our first awakening up to the moment when we are summoned to the throne of the Judge Eternal. Confidence in God, directing and shaping our actions, itself growing apace with our transformation; the confidence that makes us speak with the mouth of the Psalmist, “In Thee, O Lord, have I hoped, let me never be confounded” (Ps. 30:2).
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Striving for Perfection
THE gift of free decision—the capacity of freely choosing one’s position, commonly called freedom of will—is one of the deepest and most characteristic marks of the person.
Man alone is a free creature
Alone among earthly creatures, man is not exclusively dependent on the blind causational rhythm of nature. To be sure, he also is placed in the framework of this causational rhythm; his body, together with some provinces of his psychic life, are dependent upon it. Beyond that, however, he is endowed with the capacity of entering into an entirely different kind of relationship with his environment. In his cognitive acts, the link of natural causation is superseded by the absolutely different and spiritual one of intentional object-reference. Based on that, his affective acts, too—such as joy, enthusiasm, and so forth—enclose a meaning, a reference to some object; which,