Never look forward to the future with anxiety.  “Be not solicitous. Consider the lilies…” The present is the will of God. Therefore no over compunction for past faults, no worrying over the future, no anxious peerings into the darkness.  We can safely leave all that in God’s hands. They are not only of a clever, but a wise architect, and all power is in them.

In Our Lord’s last hour, when He seemed utterly forsaken, and gave that cry, “My God, why have You forsaken Me?”  Even then He yet realized that it was by His Father’s will that He suffered, and presently, when dying, again cried out, “Father, into Your hands I commend My Spirit.”

Whatever happens to us through God’s will is always the best possible thing for us. God is not only good, very good, supremely good, but the only good. Therefore His will is and must be always the best for us…

So we see that all circumstances, however adverse they seem to be to us, are always favorable to God’s plan, always, always as to the blind man, the best thing for us. His hands are strong and powerful hands and we can confidently rest there. Can we not sometimes see in the hands of a clever artist, or surgeon, the strength and deftness expressive of the mind that directs their action? But with God, they are not only the hands of power, and not only the hands of wisdom, but of love, and it is only when we leave all things in His hands that we find complete serenity; and then great peace shall come into our souls.

+ Fr. Bede Jarrett

The post Do Not Worry first appeared on AirMaria.com.

The peace our Lord came to bring was dependent entirely upon an interior state of soul, and was wholly independent of external circumstances. These might be favorable or not, but they could not enter into the sanctuary of the soul, its inmost and deepest shrine, where the armed man, secure, kept his court in peace.

The peace of the world meant that I had all that I desired, the peace of Christ that I desired no more than all I had. The peace of the world was largely in its cause negative; it implied the absence, the careful removal, of every form of trouble, evil, distress; it was a peace through circumstance.

But the peace of Christ depended wholly, under the grace of God, on the attitude of the soul. It was built upon a firm determination of the will never to be troubled or dismayed. It was compatible with every form of suffering, with every privation, with failure in every line of life; it was compatible even with discontent – nay, it really necessitated discontent.

The Pharisee is self-satisfied, but the Publican is never content as he realizes the great gulf fixed between what he is and what he should be; he is always leaving the things that are behind, and spurring himself onwards to the things that are more excellent.

All the saints, all who love justice and hate iniquity, must be forever discontented, must see a great number of things ill-done by themselves and others, and must be longing to restore all things in Christ. By prayer, example, encouragement, denunciation, we have all labored to bring in the reign of justice, yet are conscious of how much still remains to be done. Yet despite this chronic state of discontent, the heart should be at peace.

+Fr. Bede Jarrett O.P.

The post Pax Tecum first appeared on AirMaria.com.

 I have God the Holy Spirit with me. He comes to me in order that I may surrender myself to Him. Of course I cannot merge my personality in His to the extent of having no power of my own, but God has such infinite dominion over the heart of man that He is able to move the will, without in any sense whatever violating is freedom….

I must yield myself into His arms. I shall not know very often the way He wishes me to go. It may be only one step at a time, and then darkness again; or it may be taken swiftly and surely and openly along a clear road. That is His business, not mine; only I must be prepared not to be able to follow always the meaning of what He wants of me. It is not necessary at all that I should know.

If I am faithful and loyal and full of trust, things will gradually settle themselves, and I shall at least be able to look back and understand the significance and purpose of many things that at first appeared accidental, and even in opposition to the end I considered God had in view for me. Thus by looking back I can sometimes get a shrewd idea of what is to follow; but often it is only a guess, nothing more than that.

Still, generally, it would seem that people who surrender themselves to God do get a sense or a feeling which leads them right and makes them sure. It is the divine tenderness stooping to poor muddled humanity and making it transfigured with God’s own glory. The advance, then, whether consciously grasped or not, is in due proportion to the purity and fidelity of the soul, purity in its act of cleansing, fidelity in its subjection to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.

+Fr. Bede Jarrett, O.P.

The post The Spirit of Truth first appeared on AirMaria.com.