The Lord said to her in reply, “Martha [Control Freak], Martha [Control Freak], you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing…
How fitting that this Sunday’s Gospel speaks so directly to my heart. This past week has been ridden with anxiety, so much so that I have not slept for 3 nights straight. However, this tossing and turning and insomnia are the result of trials of my imagination. Imagined and magnified fears! My mind has been spinning out of control! My son has been away at camp for the first time and I fear abuse. Friends come to visit and I worry about what to cook and how to plan the days and how to find time to clean everything with little ones underfoot, and then after their visit I end up fearing exposure to stomach flu and lice!
By God’s grace, I was sharing my out-of-control fears with a relative, and she was able to direct me to an excerpt from a book entitled Jesus as Friend by Salvatore Canals, based on the teachings of St. Josemaria Escriva:
But the imagination is a madwoman – la loca de la casa, Saint Teresa called her, with her usual wit – and yet how often we choose her, more or less consciously, as our adviser in the most delicate problems of our soul. Those imaginary crosses that torment us and exhaust us: they are tricks our imagination plays on us….We are afraid of things or of dangers that at present do not exist, and we don’t know if they will every happen; but in our imagination we see them as present, and this makes them appear even more terrible….[but] because these dangers that you imagine possible are not actual dangers and because this fear you have has not been verified, then clearly you do not have the grace of God necessary to overcome them….If your fears were verified….then you would have divine grace; with that grace and your response to it you would win out and have peace. (Salvatore Canals, Jesus as Friend, (New Rochelle, NY: Scepter Publishers, 2002), 60, 62.)
Because these fears were not crosses sent by the Lord, I do not seem to have the associated graces He promises me to carry them. I have wasted my energy and fed my soul with distrust in God’s plan for me. I have not been begging Blessed Mama to bring me back to the simplicity and trust of a child. The result? Fatigue. Anxiety. Crankiness. Sugar addiction. Acne breakout.
As I reflect on my misery further, I turn to The Gift of Faith by Fr. Tadeusz Dajczer. Here I find hope on a grander scale:
Through faith, we are incorporated into Redemption, which includes not only our sin but everything that pertains to it…Jesus, dying on the Cross, redeemed us from fear and from the feeling of being threatened, just as He redeemed us from sin….Grace flows continuously from the Cross so that we may be saved from sin as well as from fear…..How are you to fight this fear that surrounds you? If you fight it directly, it will end in a fiasco. There is only one unfailing way: open yourself up to the redeeming action of Christ through faith like that of an evangelical child. …You should say to yourself: There is no threat since He has redeemed me and has freed me from everything. I need only to accept this. (Tadeusz Dajzcer, The Gift of Faith, 3rd. ed. (Ft. Collins, CO: IAMF, 2012), 60.
Jesus says, “There is need of only one thing.”(Luke 10: 42) I need communion with Him. Blessed Mother, please carry me to the feet of your Son. Like Martha’s sister Mary, please help me to choose the better part.
No comments:
Post a Comment