The Road To Kingdom Come

I have the spent the past few days mentally and spiritually preparing for the meeting with our partner, whom we less-than-affectionately refer to as the Silverback. After many months of delays, postponements and preparatory discussions, we finally had the meeting. My prayer and personal goal has been for a “peaceful, amicable and equitable” solution to these business partnership problems. I have very specifically surrendered this whole situation to the Blessed Mother as is appropriate for one consecrated to her Immaculate Heart.

The meeting was strained and uncomfortable but we did manage to get through it without any name-calling and obscenity-spewing. Frankly, I find it very difficult to tolerate this man’s belligerent and arrogant approach to our business relationship and, to be even more frank, I don’t really like him. But, for the time being, we are stuck with each other. As usual, I struck a diplomatic and conciliatory tone in my attempt to maintain peace. It is a part of my personality that I’m not fond of but seems to be consistent with Jesus call in the Sermon on the Mount to be meek and to be peacemakers. But, deep down I’d like to tell this man…but I refrain.

He is a bully. I can’t stand bullies. He is confrontational. I can’t stand confrontation. He is manipulative. I can’t stand being manipulated. He is arrogant. I detest arrogance.

All that being said, I am not ignorant that all of this is taking place during the preparation for the Consecration to Mary. So I am trying to approach this and all of the circumstances of my life right now with an attitude of trustful surrender to the maternal care of Mary. It is very difficult for me to do but I am sincerely attempting to let go of the concerns that I carry around with me like a surgically and psychically attached weight.

The reading from the Imitation yesterday was astonishingly appropriate for me, my propensity for worry and my current circumstances.

When a certain anxious person, who often times wavered between hope and fear, once overcome with sadness, threw himself upon the ground in prayer, before one of the altars in the Church and thinking these things in his mind, said “Oh, if I only knew how to persevere,” that very instant he heard within him, this heavenly answer: “And if thou didst know this, what would thou do? Do now what you would do, and thou shall be perfectly secure.” And immediately being consoled, and comforted, he committed himself to the Divine Will, and his anxious thoughts ceased. He no longer wished for curious things; searching to find out what would happen to him, but studied rather to learn what was the acceptable and perfect will of God for the beginning and the perfection of every good work.