Evidence for the Resurrection
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If you want to know Jesus, you need to know that He commands us not to worry.
Read chapter 12 of the gospel according to Saint Luke here.
Jesus wants us to share in His divine love. He knows that worldly anxiety can prevent us from doing this. He invites us to surrender all of our worldly anxieties to God. This is not a summons to passivity. We will have no shortage of responsibilities in our vocations. Jesus asks us to fulfill our responsibilities to the best of our abilities and to leave the results to God. Jesus is inviting us to place our trust in Him. The fruit of this trust is peace of mind and freedom from worldly anxiety, through which we can live virtuous, holy lives.
How to we achieve this trust? How do we surrender to God? Jesus tells us that we should ask God for whatever we need. God is our loving Father. We should petition Him with reverence and full humility, but also with humble confidence that He loves us and will undoubtedly respond to our needs.
And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the holy Spirit to those who ask him? (Luke 11:9-13)
These can be challenging verses to hear, because many people have had the experience of asking for something in prayer but not receiving it. Saint Paul himself had this experience. In his second letter to the Corinthians he describes the revelations and blessings God has given him. But then he writes:
That I might not become too elated, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, an angel of Satan, to beat me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it might leave me, but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:7-9)
Paul asks God to alleviate his suffering, but God understands that Paul's suffering is necessary for him to grow in humility and holiness. God responds to the prayer not by relieving Paul's suffering. Instead He gives him something infinitely better: the grace to endure His suffering for the sake of the kingdom. Grace is nothing more and nothing less than a sharing in the divine love that exists between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is a pearl of great price.
The Father wants us to present our needs to Him. He loves us and is pleased when we speak to Him directly from the heart. Nothing is too big or too small to ask from Him. Jesus reminds us that we should ask the Father to send us the Holy Spirit. Saint Paul reminds us that we should ask for God's grace. We should trust that no prayer of ours is ever wasted, that God will respond to every prayer with exactly what we need at exactly the right time. And when we trust, we can be free of our worries.
"If such is the majesty of God that a single sparrow or the number of our hair is not beside his knowledge, how unworthy it is to suppose that the Lord is either ignorant of the hearts of the faithful, or despises them so as to account them of less value." -Saint Ambrose
Pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet every day for the salvation of souls.
Michael Haverkamp Jr. is a lifelong member of the Roman Catholic Church. He is grateful to his parents for raising him in the faith. He resides in Columbus, Ohio with his amazing wife and three sons. By day he is a (usually) mild-mannered grant writer. You can read more of his writing at his blog, buildonrock.org.
