Imagine yourself a starry-eyed young adult wondering what you ought to do with your life. Perhaps you take your faith seriously, and the question takes this form: “What is God’s plan for my life?” If you were able to consult St. Augustine, what would you think of his advice: “Love, and do what you will”?1 Is it reckless? Idealistic? Even hedonistic?
The answer you give depends largely on what you take love to be, and where you think God inks his plan. If you have a theological bent, you might recall that God is impassible and absolute. God does not form contingent mental states. For there is nothing about God that is contingent. Nor does he have different mental acts. He is a single act of mind that is at once infinite understanding, love, and liveliness, and cannot be in any way different from what he in fact is.
Our concern here, however, is not abstruse theological speculation. It is concrete, practical, and personal. I mention the fact that God does not perform mental acts regarding the world in order to increase your perplexity: where, then, is God’s plan for me?
The Superego
Young adults are used to others making plans for them. Where to go to school, what sports to play, even when to go to bed. Parents tend to make these decisions for their children. The process of growing up involves being able to make one’s own decisions.
Yet as Freud pointed out, many times our “moral sense” is simply an internalization of the expectations of others, particularly parental figures.
This parental influence of course includes in its operation not only the personalities of the actual parents but also the family, racial and national traditions handed on through them, as well as the demands of the immediate social milieu which they represent. In the same way, the super-ego, in the course of an individual’s development, receives contributions from later successors and substitutes of his parents, such as teachers and models in public life of admired social ideals.2
Our concern, however, is not the plan that others have for us. Whose plan was Francis of Assisi following when, contrary to his father’s wishes, he abandoned the family’s profitable business?
Then [Francis’] father according unto the flesh was fain to take this son of grace, now stripped of his wealth, before the Bishop of the city, that into his hands he might resign his claim unto his inheritance, and render up all that had been his. This that true lover of poverty shewed himself right ready to do, and coming into the Bishop’s presence, he brooked no delays, he was kept back of none, tarried for no speech, nor spake himself, but at once did off all his garments, and restored them unto his father … saying unto his father: “Hitherto I have called thee my father on earth, but henceforth I can confidently say ‘Our Father, Which art in heaven,’ with Whom I have laid up my whole treasure, and on Whom I have set my whole trust and hope.”3
Superstition
God’s plan must also be distinguished from superstition. Theophrastus observes: “Superstition would seem to be simply cowardice in regard to the supernatural.”4 And cowardice is a false image of holy fear.
Superstition would lead one to search for God’s plan in external signs such as the stars (astrology) or tea leaves (tasseomancy). Theophrastus captures the superstitious spirit:
The Superstitious man is one who will wash his hands at a fountain, sprinkle himself from a temple-font, put a bit of laurel-leaf into his mouth, and so go about the day. If a weasel run across his path, he will not pursue his walk until someone else has traversed the road, or until he has thrown three stones across it. When he sees a serpent in his house, if it be the red snake, he will invoke Sabazius, — if the sacred snake, he will straightway place a shrine on the spot…. When he has seen a vision, he will go to the interpreters of dreams, the seers, the augurs, to ask them to what god or goddess he ought to pray…. He would seem, too, to be of those who are scrupulous in sprinkling themselves with sea-water; and, if ever he observes anyone feasting on the garlic at the cross-roads, he will go away, pour water over his head, and, summoning the priestesses, bid them carry a squill or a puppy around him for purification.5
What exactly differentiates superstition from piety? It cannot be simply that what we do is pious, and what others do is superstitious. The difference would seem to be in a fundamental commitment to reason. The pious person seeks God’s will, but does so with a commitment to a process that is subject to critical intelligence.
Evil as Privation
In the poem, “I Remember, I Remember”, Philip Larkin travels by train with a friend when they pass Coventry. His friend asks Larkin if that is where he grew up. Episodes of youthful adventure, of composing “Blinding Theologies of flowers and fruits”, of setting up shop all came to mind. But these were all paths never taken, intentions never carried through. Larkin was remembering what he wanted to do, but did not.
My friend said, ‘judging from your face.’ ‘Oh well,
I suppose it’s not the place’s fault,’ I said.
‘Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.’
Is it not evil that is defined in terms of the absence of the good? The good, in turn, is defined in terms of desire. Thomas Aquinas puts it clearly and concisely:
everything is good so far as it is desirable, and is a term of the movement of the appetite.6
Augustine’s advice, “Love, and do what you will”, may seem hedonistic. Perhaps those who come to mind are not Francis of Assisi, but those given to intoxicants, to superficial sexual relationships, or to video games.
And perhaps there are a few who need to be told that a life of debauchery or constant entertainment is hardly worthwhile. Consumerism and the pursuit of wealth are more insidious. But when Augustine speaks of love, what sort of thing is he talking about? Not the sort of thing we might think of when asked “what do you want to do to blow off some steam tonight?” Rather, what comes to mind when we are asked “what is it worth devoting your life to?” There are the petty pleasures, but then there are the hopes and dreams we too often surrender. The Epicurean, not the Christian, urges limits on hope:
Be wise, prepare the wine, and since time is short,
long hopes cut back. While we talk, envious age flees.
Take today, and trust what comes after as little as you can.7
Jesus and Rilke
Jesus’ admonition to secretive holiness and Rainer Maria Rilke’s advice to the younger poet Franz Xaver Kappus have certain parallels. Prayers, alms, and fasting may all be done for the approval of other people. But Jesus advises praying in solitude. He promises: “your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.”
Rilke likewise urged Kappus to solitude. Kappus had sought Rilke’s advice on his poetry. Rilke responded:
You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing.
You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you – no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself.8
Is this advice selfish or solipsistic? Were we to generalize it from poetic development to spiritual development, would the turn inward be a turn away from God? Your answer to that depends entirely on whether you agree with Augustine, whether you take your heart to be restless until it finds its way to God. In fact, one can take much of what Rilke says in his Letters to be about a sort of prayer.
There is, however, one important difference. Rilke advises:
go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to, the question of whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it.9
Unlike the poet in development, the task of the person in development is precisely to interpret the desires of their own heart correctly. There are many wrong choices. I have already given the examples of dissoluteness and greed, and of living out others’ expectations rather than God’s plans.
Discernment is no easy task. One’s deeper desires may be subtle, easily crowded out in the busy day by the apparently important and the easily obtained. But God writes his plan on your heart. And your heart is both concrete and unique. Reading it is your life’s work.
- Homily 7 on the First Epistle of John↩︎
- An Outline of Psycho-Analysis (written 1938, published 1940), chapter I, “The Psychical Apparatus” — SE XXIII, pp. 146–147↩︎
- St. Bonaventure, The Life of St. Francis of Assisi, trans. E. Gurney Salter, 2.4.↩︎
- https://www.eudaemonist.com/biblion/characters/#16↩︎
- https://www.eudaemonist.com/biblion/characters/#16↩︎
- Summa Theologia I Q 5, a. 6↩︎
- Horace Ode I-11, trans. D.T. Sheffler↩︎
- Letters to a Young Poet, Letter 1↩︎
- Letter 1↩︎
