God speaks to us in many ways and I feel the visit of the relics of St Thérèse of Lisieux to England last autumn was one of these. Apart from the sense of occasion and of solidarity and faith that emerged, the visit was also an opportunity to reflect on the life and message of St Therese. To me this was a confirmation of what I felt the Holy Spirit has been teaching me about the importance of surrendering my self will and totally depending on God’s Divine Providence, the way St Therese did. Fr Tadeus Dacjzar in his challenging book “Enquiring Faith” writes, “When you yearn to be better, when you are extremely anxious about your progress, it is apparent that you do not really want God. You do not want his mercy as much as your own perfection so you can stand worthy in your own strength before God and have his approval.” Ouch! This I realized is a big temptation for the committed Christian, and something we often in our misplaced zeal don’t even realize is wrong. Yet this attitude brings with it very bad fruit. If we believe that the furtherance of the gospel or our own spiritual growth all depends on us and our hard work, we end up exhausted, full of pride and self pity, often judgmental of others and secretly angry at God for being such a demanding taskmaster.

It is still all about you isn’t it?

I remember during my 30 day silent Ignatian retreat, a couple of years ago, my spiritual director, at one point said to me with great insight. “It’s still all about you isn’t it?… what you think, how you are doing… you are still the centre, not God.” And it was true. I have always been a high achiever, wanting to be the best at whatever I did. The difficulty is that when we become committed Christians, we can keep these same motivations and ambitions just transfer them to a different sphere. There then comes a new hierarchy, not perhaps based on money and power, but on gifts of the Holy Spirit or God forbid, “holiness” where we have some ideal in our head of what the perfect Christian should be like and then we try and live up to this. Of course we always fail and so we end up feeling burdened and guilty for never quite matching up – for losing our tempers too much, or not being loving enough, or drinking too much or watching too much TV or whatever our weakness or sin is. Unfortunately this dissatisfaction with ourselves spills over to dissatisfaction and judgment of others too, who from our point of view are worse than we are. The good news of the Gospel, however, is that Jesus did not come to recruit the clever and good for his team. He came to call sinners, not the virtuous. And he didn’t come to recruit us, he came to save us from our sins and to bring us the freedom and joy of holiness. This is not human perfection but the grace to live our lives more and more directed by the Holy Spirit. This comes as we become more and more aware of our weaknesses and nothingness and call on Jesus more and more because we realize we can’t do anything on our own without his grace.

God shakes our areas of security

To come to this point, however, God often has to shake our areas of security where we feel competent or comfortable. He wants us to discover the paradox of the gospel that “When I am weak then I am strong,” because it is then that we can experience his lavish grace which can accomplish more than we ever can on our own. Just recently it seems a lot of wonderful Christians I know have been going through terrible trials; heart-breaking situations of marital or ministry breakdown, of dreams shattered and feelings of failure or being abandoned by the Lord. It is perhaps not surprising that this is happening, particularly among those who have been committed Christians for a long time. As the mystics have taught over the centuries, if we are to grow in God we have to learn to abandon ourselves totally to his will - to total surrender. At the beginning of our spiritual walk, the things we are called to give up, are the more obvious sins, but as we mature, the things God starts wanting to detach us from are our human securities. These are often good things. It is not even that he wants to take them away from us necessarily, but he wants to free us from the dependence we have on them for our happiness, so we can become more free to depend on God alone. We all have these Isaac moments, when what is most precious to us is threatened and God asks us to let go, to abandon ourselves and trust him rather than our own understanding. Whatever we decide, God will still love us, the way he loved the rich young man in the gospel story, but if we don’t surrender, as Lalith Pereira tells us in his testimony (see page 12) He won’t be able to use us as much. St John of the Cross uses the image of the bird that is held by a thin golden thread. It might not be as thick and heavy and cumbersome as the chains of serious sin, but it is still stopping the bird from flying the way the Lord wants.

Temptation to distrust God

Since the first temptation in the Garden of Eden, the devil is always trying to get us to doubt God’s love for us and causing us to distrust Him and rely on ourselves instead. The times that we are living in are ones where many people are afraid of the future and loss of control over their lives. God needs a people who are free to be able to witness to his love and provision and who are not held down by the normal human fears about loss of health, financial security or reputation. He needs a people who are free and full of joy because they are totally surrendered to his will.

As the Ignatian Exercises reminds us, “Man is created to praise, reverence and serve God, our Saviour, and through this, save his soul. All other things on the face of the earth are created for man, to help him reach the end for which he has been created. Thus man must use these in a way whereby they are an aid to his end, and disengage himself from them to the extent that they are an obstacle.

Thus apart from forbidden things which we must reject as sinful, we must learn to be indifferent to all other created things. We must not prefer health more than sickness, riches more than poverty, honour more than dishonour, and so on. Rather, we must desire and choose only what could better lead us to the end for which we have been created.

This is very challenging however to put into practice. A friend of mine, for example, has health problems that stop her doing many things that she would like to. She realized God was challenging her to surrender her health to him. She was resisting this because she felt that it meant God would take away from her the limited health that she did have, which she really feared. But she commented, “God showed me that this was not the case. And in fact because I am so worried about my health there are many things I don’t do out of fear of getting worse. What God was saying to me, was to lay aside my fears knowing that God would grant me the health to do everything he wants me to do and this should be the focus, not just my health independent of this.”

Getting attuned to God’s plans

It is strange, how we always think that if we surrender something to God He will take it away from us, whereas, entrusting something to Him actually frees us from the worry about it, and puts the responsibility into God’s court. This brings to us greater peace and joy. I have been trying to put this message of surrender into practice and I am seeing great fruits from it. I have rather an over-developed sense of responsibility and tend to panic when something goes wrong with the Goodnews for example, when some blip happens to mess up the schedule. I have come to realize that however it looks, God is in control and He has allowed this situation for His plans, which I need to get attuned to, rather than getting frustrated that my plans have been upset. I don’t see the whole picture, God does, and He uses all things for His purposes, so I must just trust and let go. As I have tried to surrender things to God more, instead of trying to control them, I’ve seen how practically it has helped me to be less tense and more peaceful. I remember on a couple of occasions, nothing seemed to have gone right during the day, but I kept surrendering the situation, and at the end of the day I was filled with the most amazing feeling of peace and joy, which I couldn’t explain but was pure grace and a gift from God.

I have found the prayer below, which comes from the Houses of Adoration movement, which I have been saying every day, very useful in helping me to grow in this attitude of surrender.

I consecrate myself to Jesus the living Christ,
Present in the Eucharist.
I surrender myself completely to the will of God,
To God, my heavenly father,
I offer all my life just as it is
With its joys and its sufferings,
Whether these come from myself or from others,
Or from the events of each day.
Rather than depend on my own efforts
Or on some human support,
I want to allow myself to be kneaded and molded
In all things
By the hands of Divine Providence,
By the will of my heavenly Father,
Which so often is made known
Through the will of others.
May the Lord God listen with mercy
To the prayer of this, my poor heart.
May he deign to place and establish
My heart in the way of humble trust,
Which is the only way

Another prayer, which I have found inspiring is one by Betty Scott Stam, an American missionary to China, who was martyred in the 19th century.

Lord I give up my own plans and purposes, all my own desires and hopes, and accept Thy will for my life. I give myself, my time, my all, utterly to Thee to be Thine forever. Fill me and seal me with Thy Holy Spirit. Use me as Thou wilt, work out Thy whole will in my life at any cost, now and forever.

So let’s surrender everything to God and trust Him with the outcome.

Kristina Cooper is the Goodnews Magazine Editor

St Therese of Liseux