A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF SURRENDER
Today is the Feast of St Therese of Liseux. The wise young girl who was so filled with the Spirit says,
“Jesus does not demand great deeds but only gratitude and self-surrender.”
This is the key that unlocks the power of the spiritual warrior that was Therese.
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This post is an excerpt (with my re-organisation of the learning points) from the Daily Rosary Meditation with Dr Mike Scherschligt (@ The School of Faith). Please feel free to share. https://www.dailyrosarymeditations.com/
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Surrender to God simply means this:
Then we let God do what He wants,
or our zone of responsibility.
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1 SURRENDERING - With a positive and fruitful attitude
But God invites us to a much more positive and fruitful attitude.
2 SURRENDERING - To choose what I have not chosen
I won’t content myself with merely enduring,
but by a free act of my will
I decide to choose what I have not chosen."
Externally it doesn’t change anything about the situation, but it does change me.
3 SURRENDERING - To give consent
We give consent to God,
inspired by love and trust,
for Him to do what He will.
This consent makes me free and active
and enables God to draw good
out of everything that happens to us
whether good or bad.
4 SURRENDERING - Conforming our will to His
St. Maximilian Kolbe writes,
“A cross consists of two pieces of wood,crossed at one point.
In everyday life our cross consists
in our will crossing the will of God.
In order to remove it,
it is necessary to conform ourselves
to the will of God.”
5 SURRENDERING - Does not mean giving up
Surrender is not giving up and it is certainly not passive.
Often, we feel we must put up a fight, but we usually fight in the wrong way. We fight against God.
This is where we struggle. We fight to force our will and we resist the will of God.
We often find ourselves fighting God.
This is when we should surrender.
6 SURRENDERING - Making a choice and taking action
In surrender, we must make a choice and take action.
- We accept it
- We choose it - to choose what God has allowed with trust in His Divine Providence.
- We cooperate with God by saying “Yes” to His will in four ways:
- By doing the duty that now lies before us or the inspirations to follow
- By enduring the suffering He allows
- By delighting in the pleasures that flow from good
- And sometimes we are called not to act, or rather wait patiently and let God act while He takes care of everything.
7 SURRENDERING - Actively letting God and co-operating with Him
Surrendering is a very active choice to let God do what He wants through people and events out of our control.
We must then exert all our effort to cooperate with God, saying yes to His will and doing what follows.
This is how we fight!
8 SURRENDERING - To stop fighting against God
In life's situations, we could resist and rebel against God, or we could make the choice to go with what God is doing.
To surrender means to stop fighting against God.
Surrender is to say yes to God’s will,
choosing to accept His will
so that He can Fight in and through us.
This is the most powerful way to fight.
Letting the All-Powerful God do the fighting for us.
The little way of St. Therese.
“I have always wanted to be a saint. Alas! I have always noticed that when I compared myself to the saints, there is between them and me the same difference that exists between a mountain whose summit is lost in the clouds and the obscure grain of sand trampled underfoot by passers-by. Instead of becoming discouraged, I said to myself: God cannot inspire unrealizable desires. I can, then, in spite of my littleness, aspire to holiness. It is impossible for me to grow up, and so I must bear with myself such as I am with all my imperfections. But I want to seek out a means of going to heaven by a little way, a way that is very straight, very short, and totally new…We are living now in an age of inventions, and we no longer have to take the trouble of climbing stairs, for, in the homes of the rich, an elevator has replaced these very successfully. I wanted to find an elevator which would raise me to Jesus, for I am too small to climb the rough stairway of perfection. I searched, then, in the Scriptures for some sign of this elevator, the object of my desires, and I read these words coming from the mouth of Eternal Wisdom: “Whoever is a LITTLE ONE, let him come to me.” And so I succeeded. I felt I had found what I was looking for. … The elevator which must raise me to heaven is Your arms, O Jesus! And for this I had no need to grow up, but rather I had to remain little and become this more and more.”
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