Salamanca. Summer. It is very hot, people try not to go out into the street. There, nevertheless, we meet: they, grandfather and grandson, are in front of me. I pass them just when they look into a shop window. On passing, I hear the child comment, ‘Granddad, why do you keep stopping at all the shops, I won’t take you out again!’ I rush past trying not to laugh. My look crosses with that of the grandfather, both of us smiling. It wasn’t for nothing, that that little boy was convinced that it was he who was taking his grandfather by the hand.
This image frequently comes into my head. Does not the same thing happen a lot with us when we think about our relationship with God? In reality, who is taking the hand of whom? Not a few of us, and I include myself, live as if it is us who take God out for a walk, as if it was us who were the principal, the lord and He the assistant. The scene with the child makes us smile; its application to ourselves ought to give us pain.
In any case, it is probably God who smiles, just like us at the boy. In reality that is what we are: children who believe ourselves to be professors. Beware of pride! As Claret warns us, pride is not a good companion, just the opposite, it opens the door to dangerous attitudes that do us a lot of damage.
St. Paul understood himself when he was sent to stir up in the gentiles ‘the obedience of faith’ (Rom 1:5), which appears should be interpreted as ‘faith that is translated into obedience’ in letting God act, just the opposite to self-sufficiency, an attitude which is radically irreconcilable with the Gospel.
Continue to go out for a walk but don’t think that you are taking the Lord with you. He knows how to go out by himself.
Who rules your life? What proportion of listening is there in your prayer? How much do you allow the Lord to be truly ‘lord’.