I was reading "Total Surrender" by Mother Teresa today. This is a beautiful passage that I never want to forget:
"Total surrender consists in giving ourselves completely to God. Why must we give ourselves fully to God? Because God has given himself to us. If God, who owes nothing to us, is ready to impart to us no less than himself, shall we answer with just a fraction of ourselves? To give ourselves fully to God is a means of receiving God himself. I live for God and give up my own self and in this way induce God to live for me. Therefore, to possess God, we must allow God to possess our souls. How poor we would be if God had not given us the power of giving ourselves to him. How rich we are now. "
On my silent retreat my spiritual director told me that the more we "plan", and "worry", and try to figure out "our lives", the less time we are making ourselves aware of God's presence, and the more time we waste, fretting about our own false self-importance.
I thought this was beautiful. My spiritual director, Sr. Elizabeth, confirmed to me that our sole purpose in life is to literally surrender to God, to open our entire selves to him so that he can love, think, do and serve through us. We are vessels, and we are intimately connected to God. Jesus is always with us, and desires to be in closer and closer relationship with us.
At the retreat I was able to really spend some time WITH Jesus, contemplating him and his love and truly expressing my desperate love for him.
I am so relieved, now, that I can stop planning and start being. As a wise priest (Fr. Nielsen) once said to me, "The goal is to put your urgency [love and energy] into the particular moment that God gives you, and not worry about the BIG picture, that is up to God."
I trust in Jesus, that he will lead me and work through me if I just surrender myself to him:
"Our total surrender will come today by surrendering even our sins so that we will be poor. 'Unless you become a child you cannot come to me.' You are too big, too heavy; you cannot be lifted up. We need humility to acknowledge our sin. The knowledge of our sin helps us to rise. I will get up and go to my Father."
-Total Surrender, by Mother Teresa
The beauty of the world and of the plan of life is indeed a great mystery, however, it is real. We must trust in Jesus because he came down to show us the Father, specifically his love, compassion, and mercy (Mother Teresa, Total Surrender). We will never know how deeply interconnected we all are, but we must trust that God in his goodness is using us to fulfill his great plan for all humankind. It is true and we must let ourselves find true peace that is a fruit of God's life in us. I am in love with Jesus, because he is deeply in love with me. I pray that everyone finds this mystery and uses it to be all we were created to be.
Happy Mother's Day! Mary, Queen of all, pray for us.
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| Outdoor chapel at the Redemptorist Renewal Retreat center in the Sonoran Desert :) |
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| Our Lady of the Desert Chapel: Holy Tabernacle, flowers and Our Lady of Perpetual Help image |
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| View of the mountains and cacti, behind the outdoor chapel <3 |
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