Jesus, I trust in You!

            Recently, while sitting in the confessional waiting for the crowd to show up, I happened to be staring at a portrait of Jesus as the divine mercy. The portrait, of course has the phrase, “Jesus I trust in You,” at the very bottom. Since business was slow, I started to think about this phrase. I started to think about whether this was true for me. Do I trust in Jesus? Have I surrendered my whole life to Jesus? Do I know that Jesus has my back and thus I need not be afraid?
            Naturally, I would like to confidently answer yes to all these questions, but the reality is that, at best, my answer to these questions is closer to something like, “yes, but…” I am a bit embarrassed to say that even after years of study, after years of being a priest, and after many years of being a Catholic Christian, I am not yet at a place on my faith journey at which I can suspend fear and make my yes to Jesus as rock solid as the saints.
            For me, surrendering to Jesus, is like standing on the edge of a cliff, holding on to a rope and looking over the edge. Jesus is calling me to come a little closer to the edge until I am standing inches from the end of the cliff. Now Jesus is saying let go and my response is something like, but Jesus I am enjoying the view from here. Fear has me paralyzed, has me thinking about safety, thinking about comfort, thinking about a way I can get away from this cliff.
            In my head I know the only way to overcome this fear is to let go, the only way to be free is to trust Jesus, the only way to get off that cliff is to follow Jesus, but I am afraid. I wonder how the saints did it and then I remember that many of them were also afraid. The apostles abandoned Jesus as he hung on the cross, Peter denied him, Thomas doubted him, and even St. Theresa of Avila remarked that because he didn’t treat his friends very well was it any wonder, he had so few. Yet every one of these people is now venerated as a saint, as a person who we believe is at this moment privileged to be gazing on the beatific vision. How did they overcome their fear, their timidity, their reluctance to go all in with Jesus?
            I wish I had an answer to share, as this would make all our journeys to holiness much easier. But the reality is there is no answer. The saints and the apostles learned to trust Jesus. They let go of the rope and fell into the freedom of trust in Jesus. They discerned that trust in Jesus was not going to make their lives comfortable or easy, they accepted that when they said yes to following Jesus that there was no turning back and they could hold nothing back. They realized that the only way to overcome the fear that was paralyzing them was to embrace the invitation of Jesus to trust him.
            So, the only way to trust Jesus is to trust Jesus. If you are anything like me this just adds to our anxiety. But only because we do not allow ourselves to believe that what Jesus has done for others, he can also do for us. We need only look to his short time on earth to see the compassion and love he showed to those who trusted him. He healed the sick, he gave sight to the blind, he fed the hungry, he forgave sins, he expelled demons, and he raised the dead to life, he did this all the while telling us not to be afraid.
            In a few short days we will also witness the lengths to which Jesus will go to calm our fears. As we gaze upon the child in the Christmas manger, we look upon the face of love and compassion. In that stable, peace and love wear the flesh of humanity, and God as one of us comes to give us hope, to calm our fears, and to wander with us through the chaos of our lives. Because of this, many of us continue to move closer and closer to the edge of the cliff, and many of us begin to lessen our grip on the safety rope. This is a slow process, but Jesus is patient, he sends us the Holy Spirit as courage to walk that journey of inches to the edge of surrender, and he gives us his body and his blood to strengthen us to take the last few steps to unconditional trust.
            The journey to complete surrender to Jesus is indeed scary but as the saints have discovered it is worth the trip. Each of us has been given a lifetime to make this journey and it will take a lifetime, in the meantime its best that we keep trying, that we continue to heed Jesus’s invitation to follow him, and that we pray every day the prayer we read in the Gospel according to Mark, “Jesus I do believe, help my unbelief.”(Mark 9:24)