Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [94]
Let it be admitted that in our relations with a human being, we may again arrive at a point where—be it on the strength of many symptoms or even because of one unequivocal indication that retains its validity after having heard the person in question—the conclusion imposes itself that his central attitude has changed. For every human being may change; he may fall; his love may cease.
Yet, in relation to God, “in whom there is no shadow of alteration” (James 1:17), who is goodness and mercy, of whom the Psalmist says: “For His mercy is confirmed upon us: and the truth of the Lord remaineth for ever” (Ps. 116:2), our trust must be absolute; the possibility of its being dislodged by any kind of experience whatsoever must be precluded axiomatically.
Whereas God’s merciful love speaks to us in all benefits and blessings which constantly surround us, and above all, in His eternal Word which has become flesh, of which St. Paul says, “the goodness and kindness of God our Savior appeared” (Titus 3:4), it is by no means an absence of this Divine love which manifests itself to us in our misfortunes or failures. In these we must seek the traces of our guilt on the one hand and the hidden love of God on the other, for we know that “his mercy endureth for ever.”
Our consciousness of being children of God and of being secure in His all-powerful and all-wise love must provide the central presupposition from which we view everything, be it joy or misery, be it the tangible help of God or the apparent failure of our endeavors. He whose confidence in God is genuine will, whenever his failures or his relapses threaten to discourage him, flee into the arms of God with undiminished trust, entreat God’s help with increased fervor, and combat his defects with greater vigilance than ever.
God answers all prayers with omniscient charity
It is said sometimes that, when in spite of all our prayers a thing we have dearly wished for falls short of realization, our prayer has not proved efficacious. There is only one good for which we know that our prayers shall be granted: our eternal salvation. To this good all other goods that we may enjoy are subordinated; they are genuine goods only so long as they are subservient to it. Whether some single good is subservient to that supreme end, and in what way, we can never determine with absolute certainty; knowledge thereof belongs to God exclusively.
Hence, we must never say that God has rejected our prayer; from the fact that our wish has not been fulfilled we must in no wise infer that God has turned His face from us or that our prayer has passed unheard. Rather we must assume that God knows better than we do about what furthers our salvation; that the ultimate intention of our prayer, our true happiness, has been realized precisely through God’s refusal, in this case, to grant our concrete request.
Nor is this all: even in the context of our earthly welfare we may often observe that something we deplored as a great calamity subsequently turns out to be highly fortunate for us. Who of us cannot remember occasions when he strove with all his might to attain a certain object, begging God to grant his desire, only to thank God, a while later, for having withheld from him an apparent benefit which he now sees would have involved him in disaster.
He who has the right confidence in God knows that his prayer is never condemned by God, whose merciful glance is always turned towards us; but he also knows that God alone can judge what profits us best and that, therefore, His answer is always the answer of omniscient charity.
Again—and more important, perhaps—he knows that the nonfulfillment of our request, though we may feel it as a heavy blow, must in reality accord with what is objectively more valuable: in other words, that we ought not to consider the decisions of God exclusively from the narrow angle of our life and our desires. On the contrary, it is the adjustment