“Every stone that is placed in your way can be used as a stepping stone towards God’s will and help you to move forward” (Inner Word).
Our Heavenly Father is always concerned that we make progress on our way to Him and that we fulfill the task He has entrusted to us in the best possible way.
This applies both to our interior journey – that is, the growth of His love in our hearts – and to the concrete apostolate of bringing His love to people.
On both paths there are obstacles, both internal and external, because the enemy of humanity uses every means to prevent us from progressing. The intention of the darkness is to discourage us, to instill fear in us, to distract us, to convey false images of our Father, if possible, to seduce us into sin and keep us trapped in it, among many other things.
But our Father, in His loving omnipotence, knows how to use all of this and endow us with the spirit of fortitude. In this way, every obstacle, whatever it may be, becomes a challenge that not only confronts us, but also deepens our determination to follow the Lord come what may.
Let us think, for example, of the growing threat to Christian existence from pernicious modernism within the Church; of the progressive rejection of Christian values in society; and of the alienation of large numbers of people from the Christian faith in many countries of the West.
How can we use them as stepping stones?
Let us counter the dangers of modernism by rooting ourselves more deeply in Sacred Scripture and by studying more closely the authentic doctrine of the Church. Let us counter the drift away from the faith with the beauty of a life of holiness. In this way we will advance toward God’s will and bear fruit. God turns obstacles into stepping stones!