Most of us, I dare say, would be somewhat annoyed if we were accused of not believing what God has taught us through Scripture and through the Church. And yet it is quite probable that we have not fully accepted some of the things God has taught us, or at least we have not really seen what they mean. It is particularly likely that we do not give full value to those elements in our faith that concern facing the ups and downs and troubles of life. We admit that God is Lord of all and that He can do whatever He chooses and has absolute power to do so. But it is quite likely that we do not accept this truth at its white-hot value. We say that we abandon ourselves, commit ourselves to God’s loving providence, but then we think and act and feel, to some extent at least, as if that providence did not exist.
St. Peter in his first letter gives us the following excellent advice, which takes account of the supremacy of God, as well as of His love for us, which is always effective. “Bow down before the power of God now, and He will raise you up on the appointed day; unload all your worries on to Him, since He is looking after you.”
. . . [worry] really ought not to exist among God’s friends, among God’s own children. When we worry we have not got peace of mind and peace of soul, and we need that peace. God is the God of peace, and we cannot really come close to Him without it. And He has invited us in many ways, including those words of His Apostle, to unload all our worries on to Him. . .
Worry has no place in our lives that can be justified, but in saying that we do not mean that distress or unsatisfied desire or suffering are absent from a faithful Christian life. Worry is a form of suffering, it is true, but not all suffering is worry by any means. Distress and desire and suffering need not cause us any worry. It is a question of what attitude we take towards them. . . Our Lord, the example for all our lives, lived a life of suffering from beginning to end on earth, but He did not worry. He did not promise His followers an easy life either, but He did take away any cause for worrying about our hardships. . . Our Lord’s love induced Him to immerse and plunge Himself right into the heart of human suffering. We also have to take up our cross daily and follow Him if we want to be His disciples. . . Our following of Christ would be fictitious if we wanted it to be entirely free from distress on this earth. So we embrace the suffering He sends us, for we know He measures it out according to our varying strength, but we reject worry like a plague. . .
It really is surprising how much peace we can find if we positively accept the difficulties life brings instead of refusing them or trying to refuse them. . .
If we do find ourselves anxious or worried, we ought to call to mind what kind of a friend we have beside us in our Divine Lord. We should sincerely ask Him to take away our trouble if it is good for us, and then we should calmly resign ourselves to the outcome.
It is, of course, possible for a person to be in a position where he ought to worry. If we are living dishonest lives deliberately and not trying to amend, then we should have cause for worry. If we are lukewarm and thoroughly careless about our faith and deliberately sinful, then Our Lord will hardly give us a peace that would make us complacent about our state of soul. But as soon as we genuinely seek God, as soon as we seriously want to reform, then we ought to find peace in spite of our sins. . .
Earlier I quoted the words of St. Peter about unloading our cares on God because He cares for us. Immediately after that text, St. Peter goes on to say, “Be calm but vigilant, because your enemy the devil is prowling round like a roaring lion, looking for someone to eat. Stand up to him, strong in faith . . .” The devil is a trouble-maker, and we play into his hands when we are weak in faith, when we doubt God or the truths He has given us. The devil can appear like an angel of light to upset us. He can make us worry about our sins, for instance. But we should not worry about them. We should be sorry for them, accept God’s immediate forgiveness, and be at peace. The devil can make us worry about our lack of progress. But our progress is known only to God, as is the rate of growth He has set for us. The devil can make us worry that we do not love God enough. It is true: we do not love God enough. But our regret is out of love for God and not out of self-love, so we do not worry about it; we just keep trying to love God more. Worry comes from the devil; it is never virtuous. It always implies some lack of trust in God. . .
The virtue of trust, which we need if we are to avoid the disease of worry, like all virtues, can grow stronger; and like all human virtues, it grows stronger by being exercised. The more often and the more strongly we positively put our trust in God, the better we become at doing so. . . Since Our Lord Jesus does not want us to be worried, we can confidently pray in His name to be freed from it. All we have to do then is to trust in God and accept the answer to our prayer in the way God gives it, and not necessarily in the way we expected it. God may remove the trouble, or He may show us how to cope with it, or He may just give us the strength and cheerfulness to accept the situation. . .
We should leave the past in God’s hands, knowing of His unlimited mercy. We should leave the future in His hands, knowing that he has care of us. And we should regard this present moment with all its circumstances as His gift to us, and a situation where we meet Him. . .
I have been speaking about normal worry and normal anxiety . . . There are certain illnesses of mind or emotion that cause people to worry about all kinds of things. [If] a person with neurotic worries cannot get rid of them by simply trusting in God, . . . [then] he must seek a cure for his illness with the help of prayer, his friends, and his doctor, and never give up hope. . .
God is love; He is the God of peace, and He has told us so many things we should like to believe about our relationship with Him, [but] we only half believe. . . Let us pray for faith’s increase and make it grow by practice.
