Trust is the pivotal spiritual stance we must embrace before the Lord if we seek to grow in holiness.
All of the saints speak and write about the absolute need to have confidence and faith in God, if we seek to be in relationship with Him.
The need to control everything, over-confidence in our own abilities, complacent self-sufficiency, and prideful hubris can come to us naturally in our fallen state, but these self-centered attitudes war against the soul.
We see this fundamental struggle throughout the Scriptures.
The serpent places seeds of doubt in the mind of Eve regarding the goodness and trustworthiness of God, and thus, both Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit, wanting to be their own gods, masters of their own destiny.
The fact that this overweening pride stands as the original sin tells us that this struggle within each of us between trust in God and confidence in ourselves, between humility and pride, is the central tension in every human life.
Time and again, the Jewish people of the Old Testament fall into idol worship, turning to false gods, empty ideologies, as the source of their security and flourishing. The prophets keep calling them back to covenant fidelity.
Jesus invites his followers to believe in Him as the Christ and to have confidence in His promise of mercy and salvation. The challenge of the spiritual life is to surrender our autonomy, letting God reign as Lord and Master of our lives.
Trusting in Him and embracing our struggles
We should not mistakenly equate such spiritual trust with complacency or indifference.
The saints labored and struggled to live the Gospel, to love others, and to grow in holiness, but throughout their human effort, they consistently sought the Lord to imbue their motives, actions, and words with divine grace. They knew that their spiritual growth and apostolic fruitfulness depended completely on God’s providence and mercy.
So too, we Christians seek to know, love, and enact God’s will, not passively waiting for Him to do everything for us, but always assured that the Lord is guiding our efforts and acting through us for the sake of our salvation and that of our brothers and sisters.
In light of our need to grow in faith and trust, we should actually be grateful for those experiences, situations, and people who knock us off of our complacency and self-sufficiency. To be genuinely thankful for the difficulties and contradictions in our lives is, of course, very difficult to attain. But when you think about it, those heavy times of suffering, illness, and grief, those critical people who malign us with false and hasty judgments, those heart-breaking losses when everything we have dreamed of and worked for falls apart, are they not all precious and disguised opportunities to renew our trust and confidence in the providence of God who is both Lord of history and Master of our destiny?
Having complete faith
Jesus tells us that, unless we become like little children, we cannot enter the Kingdom of God. Ponder children’s absolute confidence in their parents. In a stable, loving home, the little ones do not worry about whether their mother or father is going to leave them, whether they will be fed and cared for, whether they will be protected and nurtured. They simply have unshakeable faith in the love their parents have for them.
Jesus bids us to approach the Father with this same serene outlook and absolute trust in His will. As Saint Paul reminds us, “All things work together for good for those who love God.” (Romans 8: 28)
In our conflicted and precarious world, we have much to worry and fret about. The Lord, however, exhorts us to be at peace because He has overcome the world.
When I am tempted towards anxiety and fear, I pray Don Dolindo’s Surrender Novena, which I have written about in this column before. The focal prayer of this devotion is “O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything!” The other helpful spiritual boost is this reflection from St. Francis de Sales: “Be at peace. The same everlasting Father who cares for you today will take care of you tomorrow and every day. Either He will shield you from suffering, or He will give you unfailing strength to bear it. Be at peace then and put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginings.”
Writing this column spurred me to think about all of the things I have worried about throughout my life, which either never happened, were not as bad as I thought, or had some sort of blessed silver lining in the end.
Amidst the storms of life, the upheavals in our world, and our personal travails, the Lord encourages us to be at peace. Like the apostles did in their boat, awaken the sleeping Christ within your own storm-tossed heart, place your faith and confidence in Him, and watch as He arises, calming the wind and the waves, leading you into the safe and eternal harbor of His Sacred Heart.