Life is simplified very much when the will of God thus becomes its guiding principle, and all other relations of life are subordinated to our relation to our heavenly Father.  Then have we brought life to that complete simplicity which is near akin to peace.  When we have learned in deciding any line of action not to think what our neighbours and friends will feel, or what the world will think, but only what God will think, we have little difficulty in making up our minds.  Suppose that a boy has to make up his mind whether he will study for the priesthood, the vital thing on which to concentrate his thought and prayer is whether God is calling him to that life, and if he is convinced that he is being called the whole question should be settled.  In fact in most cases it is far from being settled because this simplicity has not been attained.  There is a whole social circle to be dealt with, who urge the hardness of the life, the scant reward, the greater advantages of a business career, and so on; all of which have absolutely nothing to do with the question to be decided.  It is so all through life.  In most questions of life’s decisions, no doubt, there is no sense of any vocation at all, of a determining will of God; but is not that because we assume that God has no will in such matters, and leaves us free to follow our own devices?  Such an assumption is hardly justified in the case of One to Whom the fall of a sparrow is a matter of interest.  It is our weakness, or the sign of our spiritual incompetence, that we have unconsciously removed the greater part of life from the jurisdiction of the divine will.  We do not habitually think of God as interested in the facts of daily experience; we do not take Him with us into offices and factories.  Perhaps we think that they are hardly fit places for God, and I have no doubt that He has many things to suffer there.  But He is there, and will suffer, until we recognise His right there, and insist upon His there being supreme.

Let us go back for a moment to Our Lady standing outside the place where Jesus was preaching, perplexed and worried at the course He was taking.  I suppose that it is always easier to surrender ourselves unreservedly into God’s hands than it is to so surrender some one we love.  I suppose that S. Mary so trusted in God that she never thought with anxiety of what His providence was preparing for her; but she would not quite take that attitude about her Son; or rather, while she did intellectually, no doubt, take that attitude, her feelings never went the whole distance that her mind went.  But surrender to the will of God means complete surrender of ourself and ours.  It means absolute confidence in God, it means lying quiet in his arms, as the child lies still in the arms of his mother.  It means that we trust God.