Our attitudes towards God’s will for us can sometimes be characterized by a sense of fatalism that makes us feel that all that happens to us is virtually inevitable and preordained. This can result in a sense of passive resignation to what we consider the inevitable and this can then suffocate creativity and weaken personal initiative. However, such an attitude is challenged by Saint Paul’s experience, and he tells us quite explicitly that in one city after another the Holy Spirit has been warning me that imprisonment and hardship await me. And it is that little word “warn” that makes all the difference. There would be no point in warning Paul about impending imprisonment and hardship if his fate were already sealed and there were nothing he could do about it. The Spirit’s warning to Paul can thus be understood in a sense similar to that of the rich young man who came to Jesus asking what he needed to do in order to be saved: If you would be perfect, God sell all that you have. For, in warning Paul of his impending arrest and suffering the Spirit was presenting this as the consequence of a more perfect following of Christ and the carrying out of the mission entrusted to him. But this did not mean that his only option was to follow this course along with its dire consequences—Paul could have avoided arrest and ultimate execution without either betraying or abandoning his faith in Christ. However, it would have been a less generous, less loving, and less transforming faith. And so we might look at our own lives and our response to Christ: Have we settled for a life of mediocrity in which we prefer to offer Christ the minimum required rather than desiring that perfection that, in giving everything we have, opens us fully to the infinite love and glory of our Risen, Glorified, and Ascended Lord.