A certain wolf could not get enough to eat because of the watchfulness of the shepherd. He tried day after day, but the shepherd was always keeping his eyes on his flock. One day the wolf found a sheep skin that had been cast aside and forgotten. He dressed in the skin and strolled into the pasture with the sheep. Soon after he led a little lamb outside of the group and was quickly eaten.
That evening the wolf, pretending that he was a sheep, entered the fold with the flock to sleep with them. But it happened that the shepherd wanted a mutton broth that evening, and, picking up a knife, he went to the fold. There the first one he laid hands on and killed was the wolf.
I would like to use this very well-known fable to reflect on the rectitude of intention as Christians and being an authentic Christian. The wolf had a double intention, he pretended to be just another sheep, but he was not; he covered himself with the sheep skin in order to present himself as a sheep, but he was a wolf.
When we focus more on pretending to be good Christians rather than actually being good ones, we are covering ourselves with the skin of a Christian while we actually are not. How do we know when we are doing this? Being Christian means belonging to Christ or being recognized as a member of Christ. Christ came to do God’s Will and not His own will: I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me (Jn 6:38). So, if we want to belong to Christ or to be His members, we must try to fulfill God’s Will in our lives as Jesus fulfilled it in His own life.
Even if fulfilling God’s Will is difficult or puts our life at risk, we must be ready to make whatever sacrifice our heavenly Father would ask us to make. We must imitate Jesus who was ready to lay down His life although it was very hard for Him as is clear during the agony in the Garden of Getsemani: Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still, not my will but yours be done (Lc 22:42)
The better we fulfill God’s Will in our lives the more authentic Christians we will be. This means that it is not enough to try to see His Will in important things like our vocation or in big decisions, but also in small things. In order to really have rectitude of intention we must look for God’s Will in everything we do; we must be ready to renounce our own will when our plans are different than God’s plans and we must not try to follow our plans as if they were God’s plans. If we do this, we are covering our plans with Christian skin, but the reality is that it is not God’s Will. We must be sincere with ourselves and discern if our plan is according to God’s plan.
St. Theresa of Jesus says: “It is not a matter of having the habit of religion or not, but trying to exercise the virtues and to surrender our will to God’s Will in everything, and the development of our life should be what His Majesty wants it to be, and that we do not want our will to be done, but His.”
