The Secret to Peace and Happiness
Written by:
Father Jean Baptiste Saint Jure, S.J.
Saint Claude De La Colombiere, S.J.
Summarized by:
Susan Mielke & Kristen Soley
Summarized by:
Susan Mielke & Kristen Soley
“It is one of the most firmly established and most consoling of the
truths that have been revealed to us that (apart from sin) nothing happens to
us in life unless God wills it so.”
- St. Claude De La Colomombiere
- St. Claude De La Colomombiere
- John Ortberg
Why would we
surrender?
To surrender, according to Merriam-Webster,
is “to give the control or use of (something) to someone else.” So when we surrender to God we are giving
control of our lives to God; hopping in to the passenger seat and entrusting
the steering wheel to God. This is not
to say that we stop planning, working, praying, hoping; no indeed. It simply means that when God changes our
plan, we humbly accept it, knowing that He, our loving Father, who loves us
with a greater love than we can fathom, knows what is best for our soul and will
only allow things to happen to us that will help draw us closer to Him, ultimately
lead to our salvation, and draw souls closer to Him through us.
Remember in our St. Joseph’s
Baltimore Catechism, “God created us to know, love, and to serve Him, that we
may be happy with Him in Heaven.” We are
His adopted sons and daughters, whom He loves with an unfathomable love. His only
desire is our salvation and He gave His only Son for this; poured out completely for our sins. This love is greater than our humanity can
comprehend. God is love and He created us in His image and likeness. Not only in His image and likeness but He
asks us to be perfect, just as our Heavenly Father is perfect. This is His heart’s desire. When we surrender our will to His and cooperate
with His grace, He can do this in our souls.
This Heaven He has prepared for us, can begin before we leave
earth. This is what we are talking about
in the Our Father when we ask “Thy Kingdom Come.” God is relentlessly pursing us, all of the
time. He desires to dwell in us. How do we do this? Fiat Voluntas Tua (Thy Will be done);
obedience to his Will, full surrender.
The Will of God Made
and Governs all Things
God’s Will is the cause of all that
exists. “Worthy art thou, O Lord our
God, to receive glory and honor and power; for thou hast created all things,
and because of thy will they existed
and were created.” 2
“If God then has produced all these things,
as St. Paul says, according to the purpose of His Will, is it not supremely
right and reasonable as well as absolutely necessary that they should be
preserved and governed by Him according to the counsel of His will?”
2
God Controls All
Events, Whether Good or Bad
The only thing we
own is our sin.
“Nothing happens in the universe without God willing and
allowing it. This statement must be
taken absolutely of everything with the exception of sin. ‘Nothing occurs by chance in the whole course
of our lives.’” 2
"Nothing occurs except by His order and permission. "2
-
Isaias
45:6-7 – I form light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil, I
the Lord, do all these things. It is I
who bring death and life, I who inflict wounds and heal them, He said to
Moses.” 2
-
1 Kings
2:67 - In the Canticle of Anna, the mother of Samuel, “He bringeth down to
the tomb and He bringeth back again; the Lord maketh rich he humbleth and he
exaltheth.” 2
-
Ecc 11:14 – “Good things and evil, life and death,
poverty and riches are from God.” 2
We try to blame these things (death, loss, and suffering) on
man. “This is the defense behind which
we try to shelter from God and excuse our lack of courage and submission.”
2
“It is quite useless for us to try and take advantage of
this way of reasoning as an excuse for not surrendering to Providence… Nothing occurs except by His order and
permission.” 2
In the words of St. Augustine, “All that happens to us in the world against our will
(whether due to men or to other causes) happens to us only by the will of God,
by the disposal of Providence, by His orders and under His guidance; and if
from the frailty of our understanding we cannot grasp the reason for some
event, let us attribute it to Divine Providence, show Him respect by accepting
it from His hand, believe firmly that He does not send it [to] us without cause.”
2
How Can God Will or
Allow Evil
Father Jean teaches that, “God indeed is not and cannot be
the author of sin, but it must be remembered that in every sin there are two
parts to be distinguished, one natural and the other moral. Thus in the action of the man you think you
have a grievance against there is, for example, the movement of the arm that
strikes you or the tongue that offends you, and the movement of the will that
turns aside from right reason and the laws of God. The physical action of the arm or the tongue,
like all natural things is quite good in itself and there is nothing to prevent
its being produced with and by God’s cooperation. What is evil, what God could not cooperate
with, is the sinful intention of the act.
If then someone strikes or slanders you, as the movement of
the arm or tongue, God is the author of it… As for the malice of the intention,
it proceeds entirely from man and in it alone is the sinfulness in which God
has no share but which He yet permits in order not to interfere with our
freedom of will. The sin harms only the
person who is guilty of it. 2
When something comes between you and God, knowing that His
ultimate desire is your salvation, He will do His best to remove it. It is not easy to see, in our humanity, that
this is an act of love on His part. If,
for example, money is your God, he can allow someone to rob you. “When God cooperates with the person who
attacks or robs you, he doubtless intends to deprive you of your health or
goods because you are making a wrong use of them and they will be harmful to
your soul.” 2
God wishes to make you see your own faults, to humble you,
deprive you of what you possess, in order to free you from vice and lead you to
virtue.
Examples:
-
Leeches
– A doctor applies leeches to draw blood from a patient to gorge themselves of
the patient’s impure blood in hopes of a cure.
There is no relation between the insatiable greed of the leeches and the
intelligent purpose of the doctor. In the eyes of God, The leeches are an example
of a necessary instrument of well-being, guided by the hand of an all-good, all
wise, all powerful God who will allow them to act on us only insofar as is of
use to us. 2
-
Joseph
- his brothers sold him into slavery with wicked malice, but we see it was
God’s Providence as Joseph credits, “God sent me, before you into Egypt, to
save life… God sent me before you to preserve a remnant for you in the land.” 2
-
Our
Lord’s Passion – He attributed His suffering of His Passion not to the
Jews, Judas, Pilate, nor the soldiers who crucified Him; He attributes it to
God. “Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?” (John 18:11) 2
Father Jean encourages us, “Let us never attribute our
losses, our disappointments, our afflictions, our humiliations to the devil or
to men, but to God as their real source.” 2
St. Claude de la Colombiere teaches that God is not the cause of sin a person
commits by ill-treating you, but He is the cause of the suffering that person
inflicts upon you while sinning. “It is
usually the case that other people can see better than we ourselves what is
good for us. It would be foolish to
think that we can see better than God Himself, who is not subject to any of the
passions that bind us, knows the future and can foresee all events and the
consequences of every action." 2
“Say a doctor orders an operation which cuts away part of
our body and we accept it. We are
grateful to him and pay him a large fee because we judge he would not act as he
does unless the remedy were necessary, and we must rely on his skill. Yet we are unwilling to treat God in the same
way.” We must trust in His wisdom. 2
The objective is to lead a good Christian life, St. Claude
teaches that each of you has something you have been unwilling
to surrender to God; worldly ambition, blameworthy habit, indulgence of the
body, some company that is an occasion for sin.
This is the only step preventing you from attaining perfect freedom of
the love of God. It wasn’t really very
much, but you could not bring yourself to make this last sacrifice. It wasn’t very much, but there is nothing
harder than for a Christian to break the last tie that binds him to the world
or his own self… so it was necessary to take you unawares, to cut deep into the
flesh with skillful hand when you were least expecting it and remove the ulcer
concealed within, or otherwise you would never be well. 2
One day of adversity can be more profit to us for our
eternal salvation than years of untroubled living, whatever good use we make of
the time. 2
In good times, we are pleasantly occupied, and seldom lift
our eyes to heaven. “Adversity on the
other hand leads us as if naturally to raise our eyes to Heaven to seek
consolation in our distress.” 2
God Does Everything
With Supreme Wisdom
God, being infinite wisdom can only act in a wise
manner. St. Basil teaches, “We are the
work of a good Workman and that He dispenses and distributes to us all things
great and small with the wisest providence, so that there is nothing bad, nothing
that could even be conceived better.” 2
Our Lord treats us with the same circumspection as He
handles a precious, crystal vase. When
it is necessary for our good He afflicts us with some illness, loss, or pain… His beloved children whom He chastises
because He loves us. 2
Trials and
Punishments are Blessings From God and Proof of His Mercy
God’s purpose in us is a holy one, for the good of His own
creatures, so that everything may serve to our advantage and perfection, IF we
cooperate with His Providence. Father
Jean teachers, “My son, neglect not the discipline of the Lord, neither be thou
weary when thou art rebuked by Him.” For
whom the Lord loves He chastises, and he scourges every son whom He receives.”
(Heb 12:2-7) 2
Father Jean teaches, “If you refused to accept these
tribulations you would be acting against your best interests. You are like a block of marble in the hands
of the sculptor. The sculptor musts chip, hew and smooth it to make it into a
statue that is a work of art. God wishes to make us the living image of
Himself. All we need to think of is to keep still in His
hands while He works on us, and we can rest assured that the chisel will
never strike the slightest blow that is not needed for His purposes and
our sanctification; for, as St. Paul says, the will of God is your
sanctification.” 2
It all comes down to love!
Scripture teaches we are to love the Lord, with all our heart, soul and
mind, (MT 22:37-38). This is the first
and greatest commandment! Rodriguez,
followed by St. Chrysostom teaches, “the highest purest and most excellent part
of this love is absolute conformity to the Divine Will and having in all things
no other will but God’s… and in this conformity consists the highest perfection
we can attain and those that practice it with the greatest care will be favored
by God’s greatest gift and will make the quickest progress in the interior
life.” 2
Father Jean teaches, “Since it is the most perfect act of
charity and the most pleasing and acceptable sacrifice that is given to man to
offer God, there can be no doubt that whoever practices entire submission to
His Will lays up inestimable treasures at every moment and amasses more riches
in a few days than others are able to acquire in many years with great labor.” 2
Conformity to God’s
Will Makes us Happy in This Life as Well
Father Jean teaches, “[Conformity to God’s Will] will give
us the most perfect peace it is possible to experience in life and is the means
of making this world a foretaste of Heaven. 2
The result of surrendering is peace and joy. St. Bernard in On loving God, “Man knows no peace in the world; but he has no
disturbance when he is with God.”4
St. Claude teaches, “Let us suppose that you turn to God
with blind trust and surrender unconditionally to Him, entirely resolved to put
aside your own hopes and fears… wishing nothing except what He wishes. From this moment on you will acquire perfect
liberty and will never again feel troubled or uneasy, and there is no power on
earth capable of doing you violence or giving you a moment’s unrest.”2
If you have fully surrendered your will to God’s, nothing
can upset you. You will accept changes
to your plan as God’s Divine Will, and simply adjust and continue forward. St. Therese’s Little Way, was to be disturbed by nothing. This is complete surrender.
The Practice of
Conformity to the Will of God
We are to conform to God’s Will in everything. “The first thing God asks of us is that we
should faithfully keep His commandments and those of the Church, humbly obey
those who have authority over us, and carefully fulfill the duties of our
state.” 2
-
In our
Natural Lives: We are to put up with
our little daily vexations. 2
o
Word of mouth that wounds our self esteem
o
Fly that annoys us
o
Knocking into something as we walk along
o
Barking dog
o
A pen that won’t write
o
It is important to conform to God’s Will in
these small things, as it prepares us to resign with a Christian spirit when
more serious difficulties arise.
-
In Public
Calamities: 2
o
War
o
Famine
o
Pestilence
o
Consider how many souls may be saved through
tribulation which would otherwise be lost, how many persons through affliction
are converted to God and die with sincere repentance for their sins. What may appear as a scourge is often a great
sign of grace and mercy.
-
In the
Cares and Difficulties of Family Life, do not trouble yourself with: 2
o
Family Size
o
Gender of Children
o
Resources
o
Avoid worrying about anything else for your
children except whatever may contribute in bringing them up virtuously.
-
In
Reverses of Fortune: 2
o
Job – “The Lord has given and the Lord has taken
away; as it pleases the Lord, so is it done.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
-
If you find yourself obliged to make payment you
consider unjust – if lawfully required of you, then it is the Will of God. He is asking you for the money. When done in a spirit of conformity, against
your will, the act is more pure and agreeable in the sight of God.
-
In Poverty
and Hardship: God gives us what we need 2
o
Poverty
o
Inconveniences of Poverty
o
“If a rich man has a son in bad health and
prescribes a strict diet for him, does the son think he has to eat small
amounts of plain tasteless food because the father cannot afford better? Everybody knows how well off his father is
and that he shares in his father’s wealth and he will again have what is now
forbidden as soon as his health is restored.”
Are we not the children of the God of riches, the co-heirs of Christ?” All that is His is ours.
o
If anything is necessary for us, our Father will
give it to us without fail.
-
In
Adversity and Disgrace: 2
o
Ill-treated
o
Slander
o
St. Claude teaches that our Redeemer is a
witness to all of our suffering. He
loves us and has declared that whoever touches us touches the apple of His
eye. Further, He chose to suffer the
most horrible tortures the rage of man can invent rather than see us condemned
to the slightest pain in the next life.
He prepares and offers us the chalice of bitterness we must drink in
this world.
o
In whatever circumstance we find ourselves, do
not refuse thinking we are incapable.
God will accomplish it in us, if we do not resist His grace. When we cooperate with His grace, He can do
great things within us.
-
In Defects
of Nature: Mental Defects, etc. 2
o
We should not complain if we have been given
little, as we deserve nothing.
o
God gives us the qualities that are in
accordance with the designs He has for us.
-
In
Sickness and Infirmity: 2
o
In sickness and infirmity we are to conform our
will and only wish for what He sends us, both at the time it comes and for the
time it lasts and will all it involves, without wishing for change; at the same
time, doing all that is in our power to get well again.
o
“St. Bonaventure teaches of St. Francis of
Assisi’s illness to which a follower of his suggested he ask Our Lord to treat
him more gently, to which St. Francis responded, “If I did not think that what
you have said, comes from the simplicity of your heart without any evil intention
I would have no more to do with you.”
And then prayed, “I thank you O Lord, for all the suffering you send me,
I beg you to send me a hundred times more if you think it right. I shall rejoice if it pleases you to afflict
me without sparing me in any way, for the accomplishment of your holy will is
my greatest consolation.”2
o
He who is wisdom itself and loves us with an
infinite love would load our backs with too heavy a burden nor leave us longer
than is necessary in the fire of tribulation.
We can be quite sure that the fire will not last longer or be hotter
than is necessary to bake our clay to the right point.”
-
In Death
and the Manner of it: We are all going
to die. 2
o
St. Gertrude, “I much prefer the will of God,
for I am sure the best disposition for a good death is submission to His
Will. So I desire only the death by
which He wishes me to come to Him, and I am confident that in whatever way I
die, His mercy will not fail me.”
o
St. Alphonsus, “He who accepts death with
perfect resignation accepts similar merit to that of a martyr who has
voluntarily given his life for Christ.”
-
The Loss
of Spiritual Consolation: 2
o
God loves you no less when He removes spiritual
consolations.
o
“Rest assured that no spiritual consolation will
ever be so profitable to you as the dryness cheerfully born in a spirit of
conformity to His Will. It is not what
we feel that prepares us for God’s grace, but the act of our will.”
-
In the
Consequences of Our Sins: 2
o
Indisposition or effect on our health brought
about by overindulgence
o
Sacrifice we must make due to money foolishly
spent for selfish ends
o
Bad turn in our affairs owing to impatient or
imprudent conduct
o
God does not wish us to sin, but given we do
sin, He wishes for our good, which is followed by punishment.
o
Accept this punishment from His hand in the
belief that there is nothing better in regaining His favor than humble
acceptance of it.
-
Interior
Trials: God is the author of interior
trials2
o
Temptation
o
Scruples
o
Anxieties
o
Aridity
o
Desolation
o
Many have become lukewarm and careless in their
duties and roused by the awareness of God’s absence and are able to regain the
fervor they had lost.
o
“Everything is meant for our good, and such
trials ought to be counted as special graces from God.”
-
In
Spiritual Favors: 2
o
We should desire virtue itself and the degrees
of grace only insofar as God wishes to give them, and not desire more. 2
o
When we learn of those who have been given great
spiritual favors, we should repress our desire to be treated likewise so as to
not fall short in pure love of conformity to His Will.
St Claude teaches a GREAT prayer of surrender, “Either give
me so much money that my heart will be satisfied, or inspire me with such
contempt for it that I no longer want it.
Either free me from poverty, or make it so pleasant for me that I would
not exchange it for all the wealth in the world. Either take away my suffering, or – which
would be to Your greater glory – change it into delight for me, and instead of
causing me affliction, let it become a source of joy. You can take away the burden of my cross, or
you can leave it with me without my feeling its weight. You can extinguish the fire that burns me, or
you can let it burn in such a way it refreshes me as it did the three youths in
the fiery furnace. I ask you for either
one thing or the other. What does it
matter in what way I am happy If I am happy through possession of worldly
goods, it is you I have to thank. If I
am happy when I deprived of them, it gives you greater glory and my thanks all
the greater.”2
If we could discover the designs of Providence, we would
long for the evils we are now so unwilling to suffer. “We would rush forward to accept them with
the utmost gratitude if we had little faith and realized how much God loves us
and has our interests at heart.”2
Opportunity in
Surrender
Each of us
is called, in different ways, specific
to the gifts and talents He has given us, to cooperate with His grace in
salvation. He Leadeth Me, by Father Ciszek writes
of the great graces to be gained in God’s redemptive plan through our obedience
and surrender to His Divine Will. “Day
by day, I learned to experience in some measure the power of God as manifested
in the mystery of the passion. Pain and
suffering comprised the sacrifice needed in the passion for saving souls. A similar sacrifice had to be undertaken by
all those called to the apostolate. And
yet the suffering and sacrifice were touched by deep spiritual joy, because in
them one saw God’s will accomplished in an otherwise frustrating life, the
great work of salvation promoted. If you
look upon sacrifice and suffering only through the eyes of reason alone, your
tendency will be to avoid as much of it as you can, for pain in itself is never
pleasant. But if you can learn to see
the role of pain and suffering in relation to God’s redemptive plan for the
universe and each individual soul, your attitude must change. You don’t shun it when it comes upon you, but
bear it in the measure grace is given you. You see in it a putting on of Christ
in the true sense of the word. Out of
this insight comes joy, and an increase of hope; out of it too grows compassion
for others and a hope that they also may be helped the true meaning of life and
its trials, its joys and its sufferings.
Fired with this enthusiasm, the soul constantly yearns to communicate
the wonder of God’s grace to everyone.” 3
St. Claude teaches, Great graces for souls, both ours and
our brothers and sisters in Christ, can be gained through our surrender to
trials. “Those who follow along with
Christ His Way of the Cross will understand how much God has loved us by giving
the opportunities to merit so rich a reward. “ 2
Obedience in Our
Daily Lives
“My food is to do the Will of the one who sent me and
complete His work.” (John 4:34)
“That is our task – to do the Will of God by completing the
work that He has given us to do. Pope
St. John Paul II said that each of us is a unique gift of God with an
unrepeatable mission. Each of us has a
unique role to fulfill in the Church.
This role cannot be carried out by anyone else. If we don’t step up to the challenge and
fulfill our particular responsibility, other souls will not be touched and will
not reach their own full potential in God’s plan. Some
may even be lost because we did our own will instead of God’s.”1
Luke 17:10 NASB 10 So you
too, when you do all the things which are commanded you, say, ‘We are unworthy
slaves; we have done only that which we ought to have done.’
-
“Obedience, is rightly placed before all other
sacrifices, for in offering a victim as sacrifice, one offers a life that is
not one’s own; but when one obeys one is immolating one’s own will.” - St. Gregory the Great
-
“The Devil doesn’t fear austerity but holy
obedience.” - St. Francis de Sales
-
“Obedience unites us so closely to God that in a
way transforms us into Him, so that we have no other will but His. If obedience
is lacking, even prayer cannot be pleasing to God.” - St. Thomas Aquinas
-
My daughter, know that you give Me greater glory
by a single act of obedience than by long prayers and mortifications. (894) - St
Faustina, Divine Mercy in my Soul
In Summary
It all comes down to souls. If you love God, you cannot help but love
souls. Our Lord is in each of us and
when you love another, you love God.
It’s that simple. The more we cooperate with God’s grace
(surrender), the more work He can do through us for the good of our soul and
our brothers and sisters in Christ. As
St. Augustine said, “I don’t want to be saved without you.”
Daily we will fight the biggest battle of our lives, the
battle against our will. God understands
this, and we are not alone. St. Paul
teaches in Romans 7:18, “For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not
practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.” Truly, the only thing we own is our sin,
everything else is a grace; everything.
All good that comes from us, comes from God, including the grace surrender. Pray for wisdom and obedience. You must know He wishes to shower these
graces upon your soul.
+JMJ+
Sources:
1.
Preparation for Total Consecration to Jesus
through Mary for Families
2.
Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence, Father
Jean Baptiste Saint Jure, S.J., Saint Claude De La Colombiere, S.J.
3.
He Leadeth Me, Cizsek
4. On Loving God, St. Bernard of Clairvaux
4. On Loving God, St. Bernard of Clairvaux
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