Commissioned: Passion to Purpose: Living the Great CommissionSample

Why Am I Here?

God loves each of us and has a wonderful plan for each of our lives! He knew us before we were born; He formed us to be exactly who we are. Our genetic makeup is not an accident—He was involved in the formation of every strand of our DNA.

God has a good plan for each of our lives. We can look forward to the future with hope and expectancy.

How do we find His plan? We make Him the center of our lives; we find our delight in Him; then, we do whatever brings us joy! As Saint Augustine said, “Love the Lord and do as you please.” The experience of all goodness, the exploration of all truth, and the enjoyment of all beauty are open to us. As Saint Thomas Aquinas taught, all that exists is meant to glorify God, and the pursuit of any aspect of reality—physics, politics, biology, economics, art, sport—glorifies God. Doing God’s will does not mean that we grimly turn away from all that is good to become strange people. It is God’s will that we find a place of service to Him and to the people of His world that is true to who we are.

Sharing the love of God happens naturally when two things are in place in our lives.

First: We ourselves are experiencing the love of God. When we are enjoying the freedom that comes from the sacrament of reconciliation, the grace that comes from the eucharist, the sense of God’s presence that comes in times of adoration and worship, the wisdom that comes from meditation on the Scriptures, then God’s love is real to us. Then everything else finds its proper place.

Second: We find joy in what we do. God does not want to take our joy away; he wants to increase our joy! Sometimes, we have the mistaken impression that God wants to restrict our lives, take away all our pleasures, and make us miserable. This probably comes from the fact that he does want to take away some things that bring us temporary pleasure (and long-term pain), but only so that He can replace them with things that bring long-lasting and eternal pleasure.

God’s restrictions leave us free to pursue all that is good, true, and beautiful. He sets us free to pursue the very things for which He created us—these are the things that bring us joy. We can pursue the desires of our hearts with hope because we know it is God who put His desires in our hearts in the first place.

This does not mean that we always have the freedom to pursue our dream career or live in our dream house or excel in our favorite activities. We may not have financial resources, or the ideal family, or possess all the intelligence, strength or beauty that we would desire. Sometimes life is tough. But God is always for us. And He arranges all the circumstances of our lives to draw us to Him, or to drive us to Him. Knowing this, we can be thankful in every circumstance.

When we are experiencing God’s love and finding joy in what we do, we find ourselves with people who enjoy the same things that we enjoy—and who also need to know the love of God. We do not have to go someplace else to be missionaries, we can begin right where we are.

Stop, think and pray:

Do I find joy in my relationship with God? What other good, true, and beautiful things give me joy? Who else enjoys these things with me? Do these people need to know God’s love? How can I show them God’s love?