Should I go to this school or not.

ServentofGod

I got into a graduate school but the problem is that it is a weekend program so it will overlap with Church. I did not realize that it is a weekend program until I got accepted. The problems with this weekend program is that I will not be able to go to Mass on Sundays but I could still go to Mass on Wednesdays. Do you think that going to that school could draw me far form Christ. Please let me know your opinion as well as pray for me.

Unknown

It doesn't matter when you go to church.. maybe it will benefit you more if you attend on Wednesdays.. Not everyone gets accepted to graduate school, I wouldnt decline this opportunity, and it's not even drawing you away from God. (just make Wednesdays your priority from now on)

grace08

You should definately take advantage of this opportunity. Gods plan for us is to excel as much as possible in every aspect of our lives and that includes our education.  It is a blessing from God when such opportunities come our way.  Moreover you still get to go to church but on a different day, actually you might benefit more spiritually from the mass on Wednesdays as there are less people, noise and children running around. 

neighbor

the way i see it, God has blessed you with this gift of being accepted into graduate school. I dont really think it matters whether you go to mass on sunday or wednesday, as long as you go! :) Maybe you need to make sure that you will definately go to mass on wednesday and not be tired or make excuses because of graduate school. i think if i was in your position, i would go only if i knew that it would not be the basis of my excuses not to attend mass (on wednesdays). Hope this helped, rabinah mahak

gr

Dear ServantofGod,

Perhaps you will find this section from Heg. Fr. Athanasius Iskander's "Practical Spirituality" useful.

The full text is available here:

http://stmaryscopticorthodox.ca/content/books/spirituality.pdf

fine print from the beginning of the book:

"A word of caution to our readers: this book is not intended to be a “do
it yourself manual” for spirituality. So, before you start to apply what is
written, please consult your father in  confession. Some of the exercises
may not be suitable for you, and only your father in confession can give
you the right advise in this regard."

now, related to your question:

p.73:

DISCERNING THE WILL OF GOD:
Sometimes one gets into a situation when he is unable to take a
decision easily. For example, you get accepted into two universities, one
in your home town and the other is out of town but is more famous. Or
you have a job but you get an offer of another job in another city and
you can’t make up your mind. It is these situations when we sometimes
ask, “What is the will of God for me?” Knowing the will of God can be
very difficult, but not if we follow the methods of the fathers.
But, before we get into this, let us ask ourselves, why is it important
for me to know the will of God?
Saint Paul tells us in Romans 12:2, that the will of God is good, and
acceptable, and perfect. The will of God is perfect, it lacks nothing, it
is good for me in satisfying my spiritual, physical, psychological and
emotional needs. God knows the future and therefore he knows what
will be good for me in the long term.
My own will, on the other hand, is anything but perfect. I probably
look for benefit in the short term without considering the long term.
And even if I wanted to consider the long term I may not be able to,
since I cannot predict what will happen to me even next week.
It is for these reasons that a wise person should always seek the will
of God in whatever he does.

But, how can I know the will of God? Theophan the Recluse tells us
that in order for God to reveal His good, acceptable and perfect will to
me, I have to renounce my self will. That means, I have to prove to God
that I am really seeking His will.
Sometimes we ask God to reveal His will to us but deep inside we
have already made up our minds. Sometimes we seek the will of God,
as long as it agrees with our own will. If we act in this way then God will
not reveal His will to us.
Theophan the Recluse gives us this “parable.”  He says, if you have
a glass full of vinegar, and you want to put honey in that glass, you must
first throw away the vinegar, wash the glass, put it out in the sun for a
few hours until the smell of the vinegar disappears, and then put the
honey in it. The vinegar here is our own will which is selfish, short
sighted, and unlike the will of God, is not perfect, good or acceptable.
The honey is the will of God. And, unless we bury our self will, God will
not reveal His will to us, because we will actually be mocking God by
asking him to reveal to us His will while our own will is already made
up.
How do I do this? There is an exercise for this called neutralization
of my will. The theory is this. I always have a bias either for or against
anything I am considering. For example, if I get an offer for a job that
will give me more money, I may have a bias towards that job, that will
make me blind to the bad aspects of this job. Or, I may face a situation
in which I am asked to accept something that I don’t like, and that
makes me overlook the many good features of that thing. These likes
and dislikes are usually based on a first impression, that I usually re-
enforce by ignoring the other side of the coin, and the remedy is to do
the opposite.
Let us take an example. I have been accepted in a good university in
my home town, but I have an offer from another university that is far
from home. The lure of “freedom” makes me ignore the many negative
aspects of going to study far from home. If you really want to know
what is the perfect, good and acceptable will of God in this matter, I
should neutralize my bias, by intentionally identifying and even
magnifying the negative aspects of that far away university.
For one, I will be far from my family and friends. I will feel lonely,
with only strangers to talk to. There is no church near that university,
but I will have to travel for hours to find a Coptic church. I will lose my
Father in confession, to whom I could always come for help, but who
will be far away from me, and so on.
Of course these negative aspects are true but you were ignoring
them because of “freedom” away from home and parental scrutiny. Any
one who is serious can do this exercise in a few days. The result will be
that you will find yourself neutral to the two proposals, each one has its
good and bad aspects.
The same can be applied to the situation where you get an offer of
a job that promises thousands of dollars more, but at the expense of
taking your children away from their schools, their friends and their
Sunday School, and moving away from your service in the Church and
from your Father in confession.
The first step then is to neutralize the bias by seriously identifying
the negative aspects and giving them as much weight as the positive
ones. Then and only then, you can go to God to ask Him to reveal His
good and perfect and acceptable will to you.
The next step is to go to your Father in confession and ask him to
pray for you, so that God may reveal His will to you. This act of
submitting yourself to your Father in confession is an act of humility, a
very necessary pre-requisite for God revealing His will to you.
If you feel afraid that God will chose the one option that you do not
favour, then you have not done your home work the right way, the bias
is still there.  And if you go to your Father in confession asking him to
pray for you but, subconsciously, you wish that God will choose one
option over the other, then you have not done your homework well.
It may well be that God will actually choose the one option you
favoured before you neutralized your will, as I will show you in the next
example.
A young man that I knew in Egypt before coming to Canada, wrote
me a letter complaining that although his parents and his siblings are all
in Canada (as immigrants), he has been consistently refused permission
to immigrate by the Canadian embassy.
I wrote to him telling him, maybe it is not the will of God that you
immigrate to Canada. I then explained to him how to seek to know the
will of God and how to neutralize his own bias in this respect. He
accepted my advise and started thinking about the benefits of not
immigrating to Canada.
776
He told his wife, if we stay in Egypt, our house will be the place
where my parents and siblings come when they want to visit Egypt. And,
since we have good jobs here, we don’t have to start from scratch if we
go to Canada, writing exams only to be told that we do not have
“Canadian experience.” We could always visit Canada and enjoy being
with our family, and thus have the best of both worlds. They both went
re-enforcing this until they became convinced that staying in Egypt is
not such a bad idea after all, especially if this is the will of God for
them.
In his next letter he wrote me, “The same day we felt free from the
bias and it didn’t matter anymore for us whether we immigrate or stay
in Egypt, was the day we received a telephone from the Canadian
embassy telling us we were approved and have to do the medicals in
order to receive our visas. 
The beauty about doing this exercise, is that every time you are faced
with the same situation, you go back to the same routine. It will be very
easy for you not to think too much about what you ought to do, but
rather neutralize or “bury’ your will so that the perfect, good and
acceptable will of God may be revealed to you. 
There are some words of caution that I would like to tell you. Do not
try to cheat!  Sometimes we seek the will of God but when God reveals
His will to us, we don’t like it. Some people would go to another priest
hoping that changing the priest may change the will of God!
The other problem is that we ignore the will of God completely and
seek our own will, just praying to God to give us what we want. This can
be disastrous especially in the matter of marriage.
The late Bishop Poemen of blessed memory once told me a story
about a young man who always came to the Bishop because of marital
problems with his wife. One day the Bishop in frustration asked him,
“Have you prayed at all before marrying this girl?” and the man told
him, “I prayed everyday for six months!” The Bishop asked him, “What
did you say to God?” The man said, I said, “God please let me marry
this girl!”
Accepting the will of God as the best option for me, is a difficult
concept for many young people. One young woman told me once, “I
will accept the will of God in every thing except for marriage!” And I
asked her Why? She said, “Because I know that the will of God will be
that I marry a deacon who teaches in Sunday School who will be boring much about what you ought to do, but
rather neutralize or “bury’ your will so that the perfect, good and
acceptable will of God may be revealed to you. 
There are some words of caution that I would like to tell you. Do not
try to cheat!  Sometimes we seek the will of God but when God reveals
His will to us, we don’t like it. Some people would go to another priest
hoping that changing the priest may change the will of God!
The other problem is that we ignore the will of God completely and
seek our own will, just praying to God to give us what we want. This can
be disastrous especially in the matter of marriage.
The late Bishop Poemen of blessed memory once told me a story
about a young man who always came to the Bishop because of marital
problems with his wife. One day the Bishop in frustration asked him,
“Have you prayed at all before marrying this girl?” and the man told
him, “I prayed everyday for six months!” The Bishop asked him, “What
did you say to God?” The man said, I said, “God please let me marry
this girl!”
Accepting the will of God as the best option for me, is a difficult
concept for many young people. One young woman told me once, “I
will accept the will of God in every thing except for marriage!” And I
asked her Why? She said, “Because I know that the will of God will be
that I marry a deacon who teaches in Sunday School who will be boring
to live with!” I told her, “Can’t God choose for you a deacon who
teaches in Sunday School who will be fun to live with?”
Another young man who attended a retreat where we spoke about
the will of God in my marriage, stood up objecting violently to what I
was proposing. He told me, “When it comes to marriage, I want to be
the master of my own destiny!” I told him in response, “If you ignore
the will of God in the process of choosing your spouse, you will become
the master of your own disaster!”
I like to give to our young people this parable; your life is like a boat
where two people have to work, one has to row and the other has to
hold the rudder (the device that directs the boat to turn right or left).
A wise person would hand the rudder to the Lord and say, “Lord, hold
the rudder and I will row!” Unfortunately, many times we insist on
holding the rudder and we want God to row! 
One benefit of accepting the will of God as your preferred option is
that, whatever life brings your way, you will have no fear, knowing that
if God willed this for me, it is certainly good, perfect and acceptable,
even if -in the short term-I don’t like it.

... prayers,

/gr

Unknown

Really it doesnt matter which day you qo to church as lonq as you qo.  u noe wat i am saying?

anyways, def.  go to the school as loonq as u qo to church on another day every week.  I mean if you miss a week because of somethinq ohkay thats fine.  but keep it as a priority. 

+mahraeel+

ServentofGod

Thanks for all the support.  Pray for me.