This year, as we celebrate the familiar season of Easter, I find myself continually reminded of the unfamiliar ways we celebrated this season during the Covid-17 pandemic. At our house in 2020, like in many others, we did not attend Mass, no extended family visited, and we roasted a turkey because grocery stores had limited access to more traditional Easter foods. I topped each of the kids’ Easter baskets with a small bottle of hand sanitizer — a rare treat at the time!
Today, I can look back at all the ways our lives shifted and changed then, all the losses we suffered and uncomfortable new ways of life we took on, and I can see that “one day at a time” is very much how God works in our hearts. Because He is like that — a God of small steps and nudges.
When I was younger, I tended to pray for very specific outcomes. I would encounter a problem, decide what I thought the solution was, and then I would pray for that exact thing to come to pass. It’s very human to pray this way. We think we know best, and so we decide what is best, and then ask God to give us that very thing. After all, Jesus himself promises us “Ask and you shall receive.” (John 16:24)
Pero, ¿alguna vez te has sentido frustrado después de rezar de esta manera porque Dios no responde a tu oración conformando inmediatamente Su voluntad a la tuya? A mí también. Más veces de las que puedo recordar.
But something I’ve come to realize is that the example of prayer Jesus gives us is different from the “pray and then you get what you want” model. When His disciples asked him to teach them to pray, He taught them the Lord’s Prayer in which we say, “Give us this day our daily bread,” and “Thy will be done.”
God promises to give us what we need, one day at a time. Little by little, He moves us toward His will, which despite our own preferences, schemings, and calculations, is always what is best for us. If we could have seen everything that the COVID-19 pandemic entailed ahead of time, we might have despaired at the start. I often joke to my husband that if the two of us could have seen all that we were going to have to endure inside of marriage and family life, we never would have said “I do.” It’s a joke. Kind of. Thanks be to God who knew how to move us toward his beautiful plan for our family, one day at a time.
Juan Bautista de La Salle (1651-1719), cuya fiesta celebramos el 7 de abril, conoce el modo gradual en que Dios actúa en nuestros corazones. Cuando este sacerdote francés empezó a trabajar en la reforma de las escuelas y en la formación de maestros, no tenía ni idea de que Dios le estaba empujando hacia el compromiso de toda una vida de establecer las primeras escuelas católicas y fundar el Instituto de los Hermanos de las Escuelas Cristianas.
He described it like this: “God, who guides all things with wisdom and serenity, whose way it is not to force the inclinations of persons, willed to commit me entirely to the development of the schools. He did this in an imperceptible way and over a long period of time so that one commitment led to another in a way that I did not foresee in the beginning.”
And this, I am learning, is what Jesus teaches us to pray for when we say “Give us this day our daily bread” and “Thy will be done.” We are reminding ourselves that God alone knows what is best for us, and we ask for the grace to know and do His will, one little step, one “imperceptible way” at a time.
Santa Isabel Ana Seton seguramente lo sabía cuando Dios interrumpió sus planes, una y otra vez, mientras ella buscaba continuamente hacer Su voluntad. No podía haber previsto y nunca habría elegido los acontecimientos de perder a su marido a una edad temprana, luchando a través de crisis financieras, y soportando múltiples enfermedades e incluso la trágica muerte de dos de sus hijos durante su vida.
And yet, she would not have changed any of it, as she always found joy in doing God’s will alone. “Thy will be done,” she once wrote to a friend, “What a comfort and support those four little words are to my soul.”
Today, I want to do the same. I want to pray the words “Thy will be done” and find in them the same wisdom that St. John Baptiste de La Salle found and the same comfort and support that St. Elizabeth Ann Seton found. I want to pray “Give us this day our daily bread,” and then rest in the knowledge that God is present and always guiding me toward His will, one small step at a time.
DANIELLE BEAN es escritora y popular conferenciante sobre la vida familiar católica, la paternidad, el matrimonio y la espiritualidad de la maternidad. Fue editora y redactora jefe de Catholic Digest, y es autora de muchos libros para mujeres, entre ellos Momnipotente, You’re Worth It! y Tú eres suficiente. También es creadora y presentadora del podcast Girlfriends. Más información en DanielleBean.com.
Imagen: Medallón central de la vidriera de la capilla de San Juan Bautista, París, Francia, cortesía de Wikimedia Commons
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