The part of the Pilgrimage to God most difficult for all of us is this. God wants everything. Therefore, we have to let go of everything. We express this generosity, if at all, only a little bit at a time. This is why Teresa has explained the process of our pilgrimage to God in seven dwelling places. In each stage of growth, God raises the price. The demands on our generosity are always being stretched. For our part, it seems like an endless struggle. For God’s part, it is a gentle, consistent and determined invitation into freedom and love. Moving from our narrow view of constant struggle to the continuing invitation to love and freedom is the true goal of Teresa’s Program. We are made for God and we will be restless until we are one with God. “Everything I have advised you about in this book is directed toward the complete gift of ourselves to the Creator, the surrender of our will to his and the detachment from creatures …Unless we give our wills entirely to the Lord so that in everything pertaining to us, he might do what conforms to his will, we will never be allowed to drink from this fount. Drinking from it is perfect contemplation.” (Way pf Perfection.32.9)
It is right here where Teresa’s Program and May’s teachings on addiction have a rewarding intersection. May is emphatic that, in the end, freedom from addiction is the result of God’s grace and our cooperation. His teaching on willingness and willfulness brings clarity to this process.
Willingness, for May, means surrender that moves outside of ourselves. We advance toward the deeper Mystery of life. We acknowledge that there is a reality beyond our self. We accept that we seem separate yet called to union with the Mystery that is the foundation of reality. It is a desire to participate in reality that is beyond the confines of self and our control. On the other hand, willfulness centers on self-mastery. It seeks to put the focus on controlling and influencing reality to preserve the attention and control on oneself.
For May, only willingness can free us from addiction. Willfulness is a guaranteed loser that prolongs the drudgery of addiction’s captivity.
The three virtues of humility, detachment and charity are the heart of Teresa’s Program. They have one ultimate purpose: to make space for God in our heart. May’s sense of willingness pursues the same goal. God is always seeking to awake our hearts to his loving presence. Our problem is our addictions. They keep the heart full with God’s creatures, not God. The virtues engage us in the unending struggle to choose God over God’s creatures. The relentless call of the Spirit is to empty our heart for God. This demands willingness over the self-centered approach of willfulness.
It is clear to see the grace is in this struggle between our egoism and God’s loving call. By ourselves, we are not capable of the necessary total surrender. Yet, in the faithfulness to the struggle to create space for God, we gradually grow in our awareness of our absolute dependence on God. This flows from the true blossoming of fraternal love, detachment and humility. Therefore, in the end, the grace is found in true faithfulness to the struggle. The struggle keeps us alive as we await the gift of the abundance of God’s love that is contemplation.
As we approach that life-giving surrender, we need to recognize two things. The first is a growing awareness of how far we are from truly sharing God’s love for our neighbor. Secondly, we need to stay in the struggle seeking to be more humble, more detached, and more loving by our faithfulness to prayer. Both of these items will facilitate our liberation from our addictions. This will prepare us for God’s purifying and transforming gift of contemplation.
