Our Purpose: Living Ageless in the Lord

My Lenten journey with Wilfrid Stinissen in his book Into Your Hands Father, informed me about  agelessness as much as it did about self-abandonment, the main thrust of the book.   Stinissen talks about an aspect of God’s Will that gives us something to do… “putting one’s hand to the plow, being God’s obedient servant.”  These words speak to me of my purpose in life. 

It strikes me that purpose is a major supporting column of agelessness.  Agelessness is not measured in years, it is better measured by my spiritual vitality.  Personal purpose supports both spiritual vitality and spiritual maturity.  I need purpose all the days of my life.  Securing a purpose, asserts Stinissen, requires that I say “yes” to God.  “Without a yes to God, nothing can mature in a person’s life.” ( pg. 47). My “yes” to my purpose is a yes to God, a “yes” that echoes the “yes” that Jesus made, and certainly the “yes” made by Mary.  My “yes” then is not only holy it is also life-giving. 

True purpose aligns with God and therefore promotes living ageless in the Lord.  I believe that I am happier, healthier, and holier when I am living on-purpose… living ageless in the Lord.   Purpose like beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.  Certainly purpose knows no boundaries, it is only defined as love in action.  Purpose then originates in virtue and always multiplies virtue.  When I am living my purpose I am clearly more virtuous, more spiritually centered, and more living in the now, all of which promotes my essential agelessness. 

As followers of Jesus we know that the Holy Spirit moves us with Providence.  God’s Providence is therefore our purpose at whatever age or stage we find ourselves.  Stinissen asserts that we confirm our purpose when our “yes” to it offers us consoling peace of mind and heart.  Our purpose needn’t be grand in the world’s eyes, indeed Stinissen reminds us that our duty is not to the world but to the realization of God’s hand in the very moments of our lives … in the holy present.

I have come to realize that I can condense my purpose into one phrase: learning how to love better.  God wants my actions to bear fruit, and God reveals to me those purposeful divine designs intuitively.  Spiritual intuition is a deep faculty of the soul, a door through which I enter into the sacred of who I am at my core.  This faculty is not based on reason or rationale but instead is an inner attraction I feel toward living ageless in the Lord.

In my next blog I’ll ask you to take a few more steps with Wilfred Stinissen and his ideas about our final obedience to God and how its application promotes agelessness.  

Until next time, I remain a pilgrim of agelessness with you,

Richard P. Johnson