I remembered a spiritual director once said that if souls are not precious and meant for eternity, the battle for souls would not be so intense and evil attacks would not be immense. Furthermore, he added that the Devil and his minions really hate those who bring other people to God and do all that they can to make their lives miserable! That whole perspective changed my whole outlook on life and helped me understand why I was going through desolation, feeling discouraged, or had to face some types of trials or hardships every time I was trying to bring someone back to the faith. It was harder to make sense of things when I did not understand the reason why what seemed to be random spiritual attacks were happening. It is still personally hard to bear now, but it has become somewhat easier to understand, accept, and anticipate spiritual “retribution” when we do our best care for souls and bring others to Him.
First, please let me assure you that I am not a saint and far from being one! However, I learned a lot about being instrumental in His salvific love through reading the lives of the saints. They taught me through their valuable life examples of how to seek and love God, how to persevere in desolation, how to withstand spiritual attacks, how to be humble and grounded in Him in the midst of trials and hardships, and to simply be content with disappointments in this life. Furthermore, I also learned how the saints had to withstand attacks from the Devil and his minions when they tried to bring people back to the Church. Some endured long-stretched moments of desolation and mistreatment, and some had to literally withstand violent attacks like St. John Vianney. At first, it seems like God loves to challenge and give heavy crosses to those who want to be close to Him.
It is the road less traveled, but we are not alone. For those who are willing to go beyond themselves and seek the truth, they will find the perennial, transcendental, everlasting, and life-giving relationship with God that frees them from all bondage of sins, falsities, and deceptive fluxes of this world. When we truly reflect and meditate on what is really going on around us, we can listen to the deep yearning of our heart and soul, telling us that there has to be something more! We cannot be content with ever-changing stuff and empty ideologies that seem to satisfy for a moment but leave us more empty in the end. There has to be something more because our heart is made to rest and be truly fulfilled in Him, to be completely satisfied only in His love. Without a doubt, when our heart is created by the infinite God, nothing finite will ever satisfy them. When we know that we are created by His everlasting love, nothing temporary or shallow can possess it. When we take the time to listen to what our hearts are saying and yearning for, we will know its true thirst and hunger to be loved by its Creator. St. Teresa of Avila once said:
“Let nothing trouble you. Let nothing frighten you.
He who possesses God lacks nothing.
Let nothing trouble you. Let nothing frighten you.
Only God satisfies.”
Friendship with the Lord is hard at times. The Devil hates it, and he hates it more when we try to bring other people to Him! However, it is important to choose to love and to be present to Him even in the midst of these discouragements and challenging moments. Even when we trust and believe that He is good to us, that He hears our prayers, and cares for us beyond our understanding, doubts still creep in and affect our prayer and spiritual life. We waver on sentimental and emotional grounds! We get distracted and worried, especially when things do not go our way or when it seems that the Lord is not answering us as we would have liked. That is why our humanity is both a blessing and a challenge! Our humanity is challenging because we are personally affected by what is going on around us, by the external and internal factors and elements that cloud and occupy our minds, the opinions of others — even with their best intentions — trying to direct or influence us. Nevertheless, this is what it means to believe, to be faithful, and to remain with the Lord, thus choosing to trust even when it seems hard at times. I love this one particular encounter with St. Teresa of Avila with the Lord because it speaks much about how to love and seek Him in a personal way:
The Sisters thought they had lost Teresa. However, she found herself on the other side of the river with her clothes all wet. She was sad because of the time God had chosen for this to happen.”Why did you let this happen to me, Lord? especially at this time?” She prayed. Jesus appeared in front of her. He had a playful smile on his face as he said, “Don’t be sad, Teresa, this is how I treat all my good friends.” Teresa, who was happy to see Jesus, was no longer in a complaining mood; she playfully replied, “No wonder you’ve got so few friends, my Lord.”
Following Him is already hard, and it gets harder when we get spiritual attacks. At least for me, every time I try to help a person overcome the sin or lifestyle that enslaves them, a similar attack is expected from the evil. Many times, the good Lord in His infinite goodness and providential love permitted these things to happen so I could be humbled and depend on Him more! I am still a human being, so the pains of rejection, being ignored, or not being seen still hurt. I am a recovering perfectionist, so having to embrace things falling apart and not going my way still irks me. I am still trying to figure out how to walk the fine line of being there for both senior leadership as well as those whom I am entrusted to care, but at the same time speaking up for those who are of higher rankings when the matter is important and benefits the greater good, so accepting not being liked, ostracized, or avoided by them. Even though I am doing better at shaking things off and am good at holding my feelings close to heart (and not letting them be reactionary or manifested), I still get hurt by others’ words, actions, and attitudes. All of those things (and many more) are the things that I do personally not like to face, but I continue to embrace when they are permitted for the purification of my heart, deepening of my love for the Lord, reminding me of my true reward, purpose, and worth in Him, and especially for the greater goods and the salvation of souls.
All the things I described to you are oftentimes the same struggles that many people in the military go through each and every day as the forget who they are, rejected God and pushed Him away on their own earthly journeys, compromising their values, and silencing their beliefs for vain glories, putting too much trust on earthly rewards, recognitions, control, and satisfaction instead of their true identity and worth in the One who created and loved them into being. It can be hard for people who never had substantial religious or spiritual backgrounds to seek anything beyond themselves. People in the military oftentimes allow themselves to be defined by the institutional system… it works for a time until they finally recognize that those things do not give true satisfaction, when the system fails on them, or when life falls apart on them. Unfortunately, when life falls apart for those who have no spiritual depth, substance, or understanding, it can spiral down and get dark really fast! I pray every day that they reach out to someone before it is too late, and that is why I am always honored to be present, so they know that they are not alone in their hardest trials and darkest days.
Of course, not everyone is ready to change! Some people just want the inconveniences, sufferings, hurts, and pains to go away so they can get back to their old ways. Some people just wanted to vent and blame others. There are very few who want to accept that what seems to be falling apart is providentially permitted by the good, gracious, and loving God to purify and simplify their lives. A storm is hard to withstand when we are in the midst of it, but it can spiritually serve a twofold purpose: to destroy, wash away, and shake apart what is not solid and reveal what is substantial, has depth, true, and real. No one likes to endure one if it is not necessary, but the saints embrace the trials and hardships because they know WHO is with them and WHY they believe in Him, even when it is challenging!
So, what does it take to save a soul? Perhaps this is a very hard question to answer because it is not to be objectified, quantified, or measured in the eyes of the world. The answer is complicated because it would entail us to do all that we can to save a soul from perdition, to bring those who are lost, destructive to themselves and others, and hopeless in life so they can be free from the enslavement to sin, this world, and everything that the Devil and his minions are doing to keep us away from the eternal reward. It is not an easy question to answer because the evil ones are doing their best to kill a soul and cut it off from the truth so that it will be worldly worried, vainly lived, insecurely empty, and eternally miserable.
Of course, we should do everything that we can to genuinely love, guide, and bring the one who is lost back to the Lord with heartfelt witness to the truth and personal testimony of His love for us. At times, it will also require us to admonish with charity and patience so they are not enabled but empowered to live as sons and daughters of Heavenly Father, disciples of Christ Jesus, and instruments of the Holy Spirit instead of objectified means and goods for others, enslaved to sin and its deceptions by the Devil, and pitiful because of their own self-made miseries. It will be tiring, challenging, and trying at times, but we must not give up, especially in prayer. We also have to recognize that he or she has his or her own free will to choose! No one is able, not even the Almighty Himself, to save a person if he or she is not willing to accept, be open to receive, and humbly change his or her life for goodness and truth because He has given each and every one of us the freedom to accept or reject His love.
Each of us should ask ourselves the personal questions of what we can do in order to live a life of humble service, loving charity, genuine kindness, and gentle teaching to bring souls back to Christ! Many saints had said in the past, and St. Pope John Paul II, too, has affirmed that we need more witnesses of faith in this third millennium! We indeed preach louder when we desire to live our Christian discipleship in genuine faith, hope, and charity. If we do not live in humble service and choose to be His instruments in collaborating with others in His vineyards, we will burn ourselves out with bitterness, resentment, and destructive control issues.
To save a soul is worth every effort! However, we cannot do everything and have it as perfect or our way. It is a sober reminder that we are simply instrumental and there is only one Savior and Redeemer. It is humbling to see that God is able to do much more than we could have ever imagined, but He also cannot do much if one is not willing to change his or her life. Think about that for a second… He is able to do the extraordinary and bring about supernatural grace to save souls that are beyond our imagination, but He also respects our free will to receive, change, and cooperate with His love! Therefore, do everything genuinely out of love and pray for the other person. It might hurt at times, and it can cause much frustration, but we should never cease praying for them. May we understand our role and allow Him to work through us, with us, and in us to bring to fulfillment what He has begun so that we can genuinely become living witnesses and testimonies of His never-failing, never-ending, eternal, and transformative loving grace.
I have gone through a lot in my own life. I had lived for myself and turned to many alternatives; at the end of the day, nothing satisfies except His love. I know that I am too broken, too weak, too selfish, too anxious, too worried, and too human to save myself and others. I can sympathize with others who are struggling because I know I need Him! Therefore, I desire and choose Christ and would like to invite others to put their trust in Him. Please pray for me as I am for you, so that I can continue to withstand the spiritual discouragements and attacks and never lose my focus on Him who afforded me the opportunities to love, care, and bring others back to Him. Indeed, the price of saving a soul is costly, humanly and quantitatively immeasurable, but we should never let anything hold us back from sowing seeds of faith, hope, and charity so others come to know their belovedness and a life worth living as genuine disciples of Christ Jesus, sons and daughters of the Heavenly Father, and instruments of the Holy Spirit.