Your One Problem

Your one problem is that you have not trustfully surrendered every single aspect of your life to Divine Providence.

Upon reading this statement, you may have rolled your eyes. You may have thought we were dealing with mere semantics. You may have thought the statement was theologically imprecise. You would be right if we lived in the realm of academics. But we do not. We are called to live in the realm of the spiritual life. And it is in the spiritual life that we find not only great saints but the greatest intellects the world has ever known. 

The saints understood that the most important question in life is simply this: have you trustfully surrendered everything to Our Lord? This is the reason the saints were so often spared anxiety, doubt, and fear. This is the reason they suffered so well. This is the reason their success never went to their heads. As Rudyard Kipling said of a true man, “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / And treat those two imposters just the same.”

The saints saw everything, both the good and the bad, as coming from the hands of God. They did not have problems. They pulled back the layers of their perceived problems and saw that deep within was a test administered by Almighty God, a test that challenged them to accept everything in life as a gift from God. And what loving son or daughter would reject such a gift from a loving father? But this is a difficult concept to embrace. It takes getting used to. It takes humility. It takes practice.

“[That] nothing occurs by chance in the whole course of our lives is the unanimous teaching of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church.” This, however, is particularly difficult for modern man to accept.

Our culture has maimed itself with materialism. We simply do not comprehend infinity like we used to. To grapple with infinity properly, you must bring the greatest powers of your mind to bear. While you know that God has no limits, it may be difficult to accept that God can calculate the ripple effects of every action of every human to ever live. He can run the algorithm on how you will stub your toe twelve years from now. He does not supersede your free will. But He can read the results of your free will and the trillions of possible outcomes of every little decision you make. The Lord can calculate the effect of every flutter of butterflies’ wings throughout all of history.

His infinity, dear reader, is something that your mind cannot grasp. But you must, in all humility, accept that the events of your life, even those caused by the sin of others, are all accounted for by God.

The etymology of surrender has French and Latin roots. The word literally means “to give yourself back to whom you are owed.” As God is your author, your creator, your source of being, it is only fitting that your end, your purpose, your final calling is to be given freely back to Him. And of all the 117 billion people who have lived on earth, you are the only one who has the power to surrender yourself back to Almighty God.

At its core, trustful surrender means seeing everything from God’s perspective. Everything! We call this “surrender” because you must humbly submit your will, your hopes, your dreams, your situation, your body, your mind, your relationships, your everything to His will. Metaphorically, you wave the white flag. You give up the fight; that is, you stop trying to control your present and your future. And you stop regretting your past. You accept everything, good and bad, as something carefully prepared for you. And we call this form of surrender “trustful” because you are like a child that jumps into the arms of his daddy without a care in the world. There is no fear of falling, because daddy’s arms are the safest place in the universe. And no harm can fall upon a child in his father’s arms.

Saint Claude de la Colombière, the spiritual director of Saint Margaret Mary, posed the obvious question that you may be asking while at the same time answering it. “But should we attribute it to God when we are unjustly persecuted? Yes, He is the only person you can charge with the wrong you suffer. He is not the cause of the sin the person commits by ill-treating you, but He is the cause of the suffering that person inflicts on you while sinning.”

When you have accepted the seemingly unacceptable, when you have seen that every difficulty is an act of love for your salvation, your experience of a solitary moment is transformed. Every moment in your life—which includes this one, and this one, and this one—is perfect.

Perfect? Even those moments filled with pain? Even those moments filled with sin?

God perfectly designs every moment to give you the best chance of reaching heaven. Would a loving father ever put his child in an occasion of sin? No. A loving father constructs an environment that is conducive to virtuous living. Unfortunately, you often think you know better than God. And so, you choose creation over the Creator, vice over virtue. But a wise father will use everything, even sin itself, to bring his child back to himself. Hence, even a sorrowful moment is an incredible opportunity for salvation and conversion!

Even though God allows you to sin, He gives you the necessary grace to not only avoid it but also repent of it when you fall. Yes, He constructs every situation for your eternal salvation. Your sin is obviously not perfect. But the moment wherein the sin resides is a carefully constructed moment by Christ for your repentance.

Consider Judas. At the Last Supper, God gave Judas the perfect moment to abide with Himself. Christ even washed Judas’s dirty feet, praying that His love might win over his heart. But Judas preferred earthly wealth over heavenly wealth. And so Judas sinned against God by going to the temple priests. Standing before them, God gave Judas another chance to change his mind and join Our Lord in the Garden. He failed again. With every single step towards the Garden with the guards in tow, God gave Judas the perfect moment to divert them elsewhere or to stop and say, “I can no longer do this.” But he continued on. Moments later, as he approached Our Lord, ready to betray Him with a kiss, God gave Judas the perfect moment to flee or drop to his knees, begging for forgiveness. And just before he committed suicide, God gave him the perfect moment to repent and to spare his own soul from eternal damnation.

One of the main reasons you have so many perceived problems is because you, like all of us, are doubtful that the most difficult moments are actually redemptive.

And yet, consider how trustfully you surrender to your doctor. You would literally pay a surgeon to pick up a sharp instrument and cut into your flesh to remove a cancer. Would you direct him on exactly where to make the incision? Would you direct him on exactly how large to make the incision? Would you direct him on exactly how deep to cut? No. You trust this worldly man, who merely went to school for a few years, who is ignorant of the human body far more than he is knowledgeable, whose hands might shake, whose mind might wander, whose soul might become vicious, who might even sneeze at the wrong moment. And yet, you throw yourself into his hands, pleading with him to cut with haste, and paying him money to do so.

How silly you must now feel when you consider the Divine Physician with His own scalpel! Are you still prepared to tell the Divine Physician when to cut, where to cut, how to cut? Are you still prepared to tell God that the surgery is complete and that He must back away from the operating table? Are you still prepared to take the blade from His infinitely steady hand and say, “I know what I am doing?”

When you, dear Christian, can see every difficulty in your life as an incision into your soul by the Divine Physician, brought to you for the sole and exclusive purpose of healing you of self-centeredness and pride and a myriad of other imperfections, then you will understand that your one and only problem is whether you trust the Divine Hand that holds the scalpel.

Not one saint was left untouched by some form of suffering or divine surgery. Was not Saint Paul’s temporary blindness and constant health issues a sign from God that his strength came from God alone? Was not the cannonball that shattered Saint Ignatius of Loyola’s leg a sign from God to convert his wayward soul? Were not the deaths of Saints Louis and Zélie Martin’s four children a nudge towards detachment from this passing world? If you look around the world, you will see that you are not the only one who suffers. No, everyone must suffer. In fact, the saints suffered as much as any class of people. But they did not suffer for the sake of suffering but rather because God ordained it. They knew that the Divine Physician had a reason for their suffering, whether it was to make atonement for their past sins or for the sins of others.

Dear reader, never forget the words of Saint Faustina, who once said, “If the angels were capable of envy, they would envy us for two things: one is the receiving of Holy Communion, and the other is suffering.” Next time you suffer, call upon your guardian angel, who looks with the greatest compassion on your pain, and who would gladly trade places with you. Specifically, ask your guardian angel for God’s light and grace so that you might suffer with peace and gratitude for being chosen by Christ to help carry His cross.

Editor’s Note: This article is adapted from a chapter in Conor Gallagher’s You Have Only One Problem: Experience the Instant Reward of Trustful Surrender, available from TAN Books.

Image from Wikimedia Commons