Christ Makes Himself Dependent on Our Trust
Broken Dreams
As children bring their broken toys
With tears for us to mend,
I brought my broken dreams to God
Because He was my friend.
But then instead of leaving Him
In peace to work alone,
I hung around and tried to help
With ways that were my own.
At last I snatched them back and cried,
“How could you be so slow”
“My child,” He said, “What could I do?
You never did let go.”
Robert J. Burdette
I first heard the poem I just read, written by Robert Burdette, many years ago when I was in graduate school. As I thought about what to say in this talk, the poem came to my mind again as an example of how we often lack trust in God. Our Lord revealed to St. Faustina that “Sins of distrust wound Me most painfully” (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, #1076). What does it mean to trust in the Lord, and why would our distrust in Him wound Him so much?
The Oxford American Dictionary defines trust as “firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability or strength of someone or something.” While some would like to define trust as an irrational belief in someone or something, arrived at without investigating the matter, I believe that the act of trusting someone is a very profound act of reason. While we might not be able to prove with mathematical or scientific precision why we trust the people we do, our trust is earned, often through our experience with the person or thing that we place our trust in. I trusted that my car was going to start when I had to run over here to Roman Hall after saying Mass. Why? Because for the past three years since I have had my car it has always started when I got in and pushed the start button. When I arrived I trusted that Msgr. Arnister was not going to shock me with a joy-buzzer when I shook his hand, because in the years that I have known him he has always been a friendly, gracious person. Because of my past experience with Msgr. Arnister, and my car, I was able to place trust in them; that they would be reliable and true.
While these may seem like somewhat silly examples, I have come to realize that in order to know God we need to look closely at our experiences. Otherwise God becomes too abstract; just a theoretical construct, and the Christian life becomes just following a set of rules. This is what St. Paul wrote so much against in his letters when he spoke about becoming free from the Law. St. Paul realized that the Law had become mere moralism and not a sharing in the Divine Life. Yet God is not abstract, He is not distant. In fact He loves us so much that He demonstrated His personal commitment to our salvation by sending His only-begotten Son in the flesh. Jesus is the God-Man, He took on flesh so that He could walk with us, touch us, talk with us. In other words by becoming flesh, Jesus became someone that people could experience, and through their experience with Jesus they could come to see that He was reliable, true and had the strength and ability to establish the Kingdom of God as He claimed.
Yet the ability to have a personal experience with Jesus did not end with His death on the cross, because He rose from the dead. And it did not end with His ascension into Heaven because He promised that He would remain with us until the end of time. Jesus remains with us in His Church, which cannot be reduced to being merely an institution or building or organization. Rather the Church is a Life. It is the Life of Jesus. The various members or parts of His body are joined together and enlivened by His Holy Spirit, and it is through our encounters and experiences with the Church that we continue to encounter and experience Christ Jesus. And for certain blessed souls, Jesus expresses this continued encounter through extraordinary ways. St. Faustina was one such soul, and that is why her diary is more like a dialogue with Jesus who speaks to her as she speaks with Him.
As beautiful as her diary is, even as beautiful as the New Testament is, if we merely read them as just something disconnected from us, then they will not help us trust Jesus. Rather all spiritual reading is meant to provoke us to examine our own experiences so that we recognize our own encounters with Christ. It is only through looking at our experiences with God that we will develop trust in Him.
So, why should we trust in God?
Let’s just look at our most fundamental experience. We experience ourselves as existing; we have being. This implies that there was a time when we did not exist, when we did not have being, and all that means that we were created. If there are creatures, of which we are each one, then there must be a Creator, and our faith tells us that God is that Creator. When God revealed His name to Moses through the burning bush, He said that His name is “I AM.” God’s name is the verb “to be” which indicates that He is the source of all being, of all existence. So our encounters with all the creation around us sings of the Glory of God our Creator.
Next we might ask, what kind of Creator is God? Did He just create everything and then dusted off His hands and let things run on their own without taking much interest in what became of His creation? Starting with the Old Testament we see that this is not the case. That even when we lost God’s friendship because of our disobedience, He continued to care for humanity; He continued to reveal His will to human beings so that we would know the way of His Divine Life. This indicates that God loves us. In fact St. John, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, reveals that God not only loves but He IS love. Have you ever experienced love in your life? All of us can surely recall experiences of love in our lives, and when we ponder those experiences we recognize God’s presence in the midst of all that love. Since God is love, where ever love is there is God.
God has revealed to us, both through the prophets, and most perfectly by the Incarnation, that His love is that of a Father for His children. God is our Heavenly Father, and the source of all true fatherhood. So we can look at our experiences with our own fathers as experiences of God.
Remembering my father, I know that he put his family above his own desires. He worked very hard to provide for us. Oh sure, there were times when my sisters or I wanted the latest fad and we didn’t get it, and we felt disappointed and angry. However as we look back on it, we see that most of the time we did not really NEED what we wanted, and that Dad had our long term happiness in mind. As we matured, Dad allowed us to make more of our own decisions. I am sure that we sometimes didn’t make what he thought was the best decision — I can remember making a bad decision involving a french curve — but Dad allowed us to experience the consequences of our decisions, protecting us from those that would overwhelm us, so that we would learn from them. And of course he was always there for us, and quick to forgive.
Now many people have not had very positive relationships with their fathers, but we can all look at our relationship with our Heavenly Father. He does have plans for us. He said to the prophet Jeremiah, and says to us, “For I know the plans I have for you; plans to prosper you . . . plans to give you hope and a future” (Jer. 29:11). I am sure that Jeremiah did not see clearly all that God’s plans had for him and for the Chosen People, but he trusted. God also gives us free will, and often we abuse that freedom by choosing sin, choosing to follow our own will and not God’s. Yet God does not turn His back on us. He continues to call us to repentance, and He continues to offer us His loving forgiveness, and we call this loving forgiveness His Mercy.
Think of the good things in your lives. Think about the fact that you did not have to search the gutter for food this morning. That you have warm clothes. That you were able to attend the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. In all these things we see how God is providing for us.
The greatest gift that our Heavenly Father has given to us is His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus demonstrated the infinite love of God by offering everything that He is for us, by His passion and death. All these experiences demonstrate that God the Father and Jesus are reliable, they are true, and they are able to provide for our happiness, so that we can have life to the full. If there was going to be anyone that we trusted it really needs to be God, for He has demonstrated His trustworthiness more than anyone. Yet, at times we still distrust.
Jesus said to St. Faustina, “Distrust on the part of souls is tearing My insides . . . despite My inexhaustible love for them they do not trust Me. Even My death is not enough for them. Woe to the soul that abuses these gifts” (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, #50). Why do we tear at the insides of Jesus by not trusting in Him?
There are two principles reasons why we often lack trust in God — pride and fear. Since pride is the root of all evil, let us first look at it, and how it impedes our trust in God. And let us turn again to the poem that I read at the start. As our loving Father, God wants us to bring our needs to Him, including our broken dreams. That is an initial act of trust, because we would not bring our needs to someone if we did not think that they could help us. “But then instead of leaving Him In peace to work alone, I hung around and tried to help With ways that were my own.” How often do we do just that? This is our own pride acting up, thinking that we know better than God what will make us truly happy. It is a distrust in God’s plan; we become impatient and want things done our way and according to our timeline.
We need to keep in mind that we are finite, and we do not know everything, whereas God is all-knowing. It is fitting that today is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, for in today’s Gospel reading we have a perfect example of trusting in God’s plan. While we do not know for sure, it is likely that Mary was a teenager of 14 or 15 when the Angel Gabriel came to announce God’s plan to her. Gospel account says that Mary was troubled by his greeting and wondered what it meant. I am sure that part of her thought that all this was happening too fast; not according to her timeline. She had planned to get married first, and then have a child. Yet Mary’s experiences with God assured her that He was her Heavenly Father and that she could trust Him. She knew that God’s will, while mysterious to her, was so much superior to her own. So in trust she answered, “May it be done to me according to your word.”
The other reason we often distrust God is fear. I think that is why Jesus says over and over again throughout the Gospels, “Do not be afraid.” Often when we see God’s will for us we also see the difficulties, struggles and even persecutions that will be involved and we are afraid. We don’t think we can do what God is asking of us. We might not understand why He is asking it of us. Can we really trust that God will not abandon us in our difficulties and need?
I think we need only to look to the Garden of Gethsemane to see how to respond to God’s will when we are afraid. Jesus was afraid. In His human nature He was afraid of the torture, suffering and death that His Father was calling Him to endure. He asked His Father to let the cup of His passion to pass away from Him if it was possible, but He did not allow His fear to destroy His trust in His Father. He said in the end, “Not my will, but thy will be done.”
We are not often called to face the persecution and suffering that Christ faced in dying on the Cross for us, yet often we allow our fear to undermine our trust in God. We are afraid that others might think less of us if we say “no” to some activity that we know is contrary to the Divine Life. We fear losing friends and family if we talk about God too much, if we invite others to join us at Mass, or bring up the Church’s teachings on some of the issues we are facing in our lives. Often we are afraid of giving up the sin in our lives because we have become too comfortable with it. Or we are afraid of Christ’s Mercy.
Part of the message of Divine Mercy entrusted to St. Faustina is for all of us to utterly place our trust in God. Jesus said to her, “When a soul approaches Me with trust, I fill it with such an abundance of graces that it cannot contain them within itself, but radiates them to other souls” (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, #1074).
In thinking about a title for this talk I decided to call it “Christ makes Himself Dependent on Our Trust.” I took it from the following passage from St. Faustina’s diary, “Suddenly I heard these words in my soul: My daughter, I assure you of a permanent income on which you will live. Your duty will be to trust completely in My goodness, and My duty will be to give you all you need. I am making Myself dependent upon your trust: if your trust is great, then My generosity will be without limit” (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, #548). Christ makes Himself dependent on US, on our trust. As Jesus depended on Mary and Joseph to care for Him when He was an infant and child, He continues to humble Himself to make Himself dependent on us. He desires to fill the world with His Mercy, with His love. He wants all of us to have life, life to the full. He offers us all good things. Will we trust in Him, even if the road gets difficult and we might need to endure persecution for our faith in Him?
JESUS, I TRUST IN YOU!
[This was a talk that I gave to the Jesus Divine Mercy Ministry of Yardley, PA. They have a monthly day of inspiration at the Roman Hall Restaurant, Trenton, NJ]
