In God's own time

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

September 23, 2022: Remembering Padre Pio 

Ecclesiates 3: 1-11; Luke 9: 18-22

Two great enemies to spiritual health, as spiritual masters point out are: Anxiety and Curiosity! 

Anxiety is against faith because it points to a lack of trust in the Lord. It is an unrealistic worry about the future, in a particular way not helpful in anyway to prepare oneself towards a health encounter with that moment that is yet to come! Think of the times when we are wailing about a possible failure or a probable difficulty, although it is not yet a reality.

Curiosity is lack of patient acceptance of the present. It is trying in vain to pry into the time that is yet to come, in no way helping a peaceful experience of whatever is happening around at any given moment. Think of those moments when we are dying to know the results of somethings that we have not even started yet - all the craze from a playful guessing to a gamble-filled foretelling, fall under this category! 

To both anxiety and curiosity, as to many other spiritual ailments, the corrective offered is Surrender! In short, surrender can be described as the inner assurance that in God's time everything will happen, for good. Patience, trust and the unfailing confidence in God's goodness, are the ingredients of this mentality of surrender. Especially when things aren't going the way we would want them to, we need this quality to remain sane and secure.

In the Gospel today, we find Jesus as a personification of this quality. He was neither curious nor anxious about his mission on earth. That is why he was more interested about the personal conviction of everyone and not the mass public opinion; and he was stern that they don't go about frenetically spreading their conviction and forcing it on people, but to let people arrive at that conviction, each one through their own experience! 

The saint we remember today, Padre Pio, can be considered a great example in following on these footsteps suggested by our Lord. That serenity on Jesus' part and that sense of the Divine that we see in Padre Pio, came from the attitude of Surrender, an assurance that everything will be made beautiful IN GOD'S OWN TIME.