Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 12.11

What a power man has to do nothing except what God will approve, and to accept all that God may give him.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 12.11 (tr Long)

“And here you thought it was all about you.”

I’ve never enjoyed it when people remind me of my vanity, of my foolish desire to make myself supreme, but when someone once said it to me in that way, at a certain time, under a specific set of circumstances, I had one of those moments. You know, one of those moments where you will never be quite the same again. Something has clicked, something that should have clicked long ago.

I cannot relate to a version of Stoicism that begins and ends with the self, because while Stoicism is about self-reliance, I can only understand it within the context of the whole of Nature, under the rule of Providence, manifest through the Divine. I would often become frustrated with people who so easily dismissed others, or who so hastily shunned any openness to God, until I realized how my own resentment was a symptom of the very same arrogance.

My own power is not absolute, and even my own power over myself is subject to the Nature of which I must necessarily be a part. My mind can reach out to infinite being, and my heart can reach out to infinite love, but I am not the center. I am not the measure, but a thing measured, as Fulton Sheen taught me all those years ago.

“There you go with your God again! You are limiting me, restricting me, telling me what I can or cannot be!”

No, He is not my God, He is the very order of all being, in fact Being itself. We are talking past one another, because I only know that there is the Absolute, and I do not claim that it insists on borders and limitations. Quite the contrary, it transcends all borders and limitations.

For me, it isn’t about me against God. It is about me within God, through God, an expression of God. When I fail to see this, I am not thinking big enough. There is never even a “me” without the whole that contains me.

There is nothing I can do that is somehow “outside” of such a totality, just as I must learn how everything that happens serves its purpose within such a totality. I am made to do what I can do, and other things are made to do what they will do.

The peace that comes from a mastery of self must also include a joyful acceptance of a Universe that makes that very self possible.

Written in 8/2009