“In the course of this retreat, the Lord has given me the light to know His will more profoundly and to abandon myself completely to the holy will of God. This light has confirmed me in profound peace, making me understand that I should fear nothing except sin. Whatever God sends me, I accept with complete submission to His holy will. Wherever He puts me, I will try faithfully to do His holy will, as well as His wishes, to the extent of my power to do so, even if the will of God were to be as hard and difficult for me as was the will of the Heavenly Father for His Son, as He prayed in the Garden of Olives. I have come to see that if the will of the Heavenly Father was fulfilled in this way in His well-beloved Son, it will be fulfilled in us in exactly the same way: by suffering, persecution, abuse, disgrace. It is through all this that my soul becomes like unto Jesus. And the greater the sufferings, the more I see that I am becoming like Jesus. This is the surest way. If some other way were better, Jesus would have shown it to me. Sufferings in no way take away my peace. On the other hand, although I enjoy profound peace, that peace does not lessen my experience of suffering. Although my face is often bowed to the ground, and my tears flow profusely, at the same time my soul is filled with profound peace and happiness…“ Divine Mercy in my soul # 1394
This may not seem immediately attractive to you. Who would want to endure these things? But we ought to remember that Jesus endured them all to the greatest degree. Was Jesus happy? Was His soul at peace? Most certainly.
This reveals to us that these crosses in life cannot ultimately do us harm if we are immersed in the presence of God. Remember Jesus agonizing in the Garden, or the mockery He endured, or the rejection that many directed at Him, yet in all of this He remained in a peaceful repose. Nothing in this world can steal us away from a profound peace if we remain immersed in the presence of God. All the suffering, persecution, abuse and disgrace in the world cannot ultimately have victory over a soul given to God.
The key to accepting the crosses of our life is to follow our Lord’s example on e Mount of Olives. As He prayed to God the Father, ““Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.”” Luke 22:42
You can see in His words that He didn’t necessarily want to go to the cross but He quickly moved from that to the Father’s Will. He lived to do the Father’s Divine Will. So should we.
I lived both sides of this scene in my life. A decade ago, I struggled to surrender that night in the ICU. God asked me to take up my cross, giving my daughter fully in His Hands. I couldn’t. That drove me into a dark night of the soul. From that dark night, 6 years later, God had grown and taught me to live more the words from His Divine Mercy image, “Jesus I trust in You”. That day after the doctors told me that it was “an extreme effort to keep her stable”, I walked into her room and said the words of Jesus in my own Garden of Olives, “Father, heal Your daughter, but not my will but Yours be done.”
That afternoon I learned and felt how Jesus dealt with the stress of His Passion. By surrendering to the Father’s Will and trusting Him fully. God made me into something more that day with this prayer. I’m still developing that new man but I do trust and fall upon the Father’s Divine Will quicker and more fully now than ever.
Do you trust the Father enough to surrender fully? Enough to endure pain with a level of joy and peace…