Evelyn Underhill Muses on the Working of the Holy Spirit

Those who imagine that they are called to contemplation because they are attracted by contemplation, when the common duties of existence steadily block this path, do well to realise that our own feelings and preferences are very poor guides when it comes to the robust realities and stern demands of the Spirit.

St. Paul did not want to be an apostle to the Gentiles. He wanted to be a clever and appreciated young Jewish scholar, and kicked against the pricks. St. Ambrose and St. Augustine did not want to be overworked and worried bishops. Nothing was farther from their intentions. St. Francis Xavier’s preference was for an ordered life close to his beloved master, St. Ignatius. At a few hours notice he was sent to be the Apostle of the Indies and never returned to Europe again. Henry Martyn, the fragile and exquisite scholar, was compelled to sacrifice the intellectual life to which he was so perfectly fitted for the missionary life to which he felt decisively called. In all these, a power beyond themselves decided the direction of life. Yet in all we recognise not frustration, but the highest of all types of achievement. Things like this—and they are constantly happening—gradually convince us that the overruling reality of life is the Will and Choice of a Spirit acting not in a mechanical but in a living and personal way; and that the spiritual life does not consist in mere individual betterment, or assiduous attention to one’s own soul, but in a free and unconditional response to the Spirit’s pressure and call, whatever the cost may be.

—Evelyn Underhill, The Spiritual Life

Are you kicking against the pricks or surrendering your life to the Will and Choice of the Holy Spirit? Your decision will greatly affect how much joy you have in living, a joy that is not contingent on the fickleness of life and this world, but rather a joy that flows from living in the kind of relationship with your Creator that he created you to have.

Then Jesus said to them all: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).