Handing Over the Spirit - TRUST

In prayer today I was trying to focus on the prayer and not what I was praying for. I was praying a Chaplet and kept losing my focus to worrying about what it was I was offering up. As I sat there losing my place for the fifth time I finally stopped and ask God why I can't focus.

I just want to trust God with everything; I want to hand it over and trust that he will take care of it all. But instead I'm sitting there thinking of solutions, figuring it out in my head while I recite the prayers. Why?

In truth I think it is because where the rubber meets the road when it comes to trusting God is in actually handing over our troubles one by one and actually letting go. This is what God desires of us in prayer. To hand it all over to him and let it be His concern. "Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span?" Matt 6:27

I began to think about Christ on the Cross in that moment of handing over His spirit and breathing his last. He had to actually hand over his spirit; he had to lay it down. He had to trust that His Father would not fail Him.

I think about that in relation to my own struggles. I must hand each one over to God and die to it. Christ breathed his last and so too must I breathe my last breathe of concern and worry. I must give it over to Him and die to the worry - If I hand over my worry, my anxiety about one thing or another - I must like Christ say "into your hands Lord I commend my spirit." Not so I can pick it back up later. Often I think we pray, and then we go to work trying to solve this or that. Or we pray and let it go only to wake up in panic the next day continuing to worry. Rather, what we ought to do is breathe our last concern over that matter, hand it over to the Father through Christ's Divine Mercy and allow Him to do the rest. In a sense we are waiting for a "resurrection" of that concern/worry/situation.

This is a difficult task and one that must happen over and over again, as new situations rise in our lives and we hand them over one by one dying to our worry a little more each day. Each time we do this His infinite Grace and Mercy fill that place in our hearts and goes to work in our lives.

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, truly present in the Holy Eucharist, I place all my trust in you.


I offer this simple prayer to help you in handing it over to Christ.

A Prayer of Trust
Father, into your hands I commend my spirit; my human weakness, my frailty, my anxiety and fear. Into your hands Lord I commend __________________ (list a concern or burden). I die to this worry in full trust and confidence that your mercy and grace are sufficient for me and that just as your Son rose from the grave you will resurrect this situation in my life.

Another prayer from the Divine Mercy Novena:

Eternal God, in whom mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion —
inexhaustible, look kindly upon us and increase Your mercy in us, that in
difficult moments we might not despair nor become despondent, but with great
confidence submit ourselves to Your holy will, which is Love and Mercy itself.

If you haven't prayed the Divine Mercy Chaplet I encourage you to pray it regularly to help you in this dying to your worries and concerns. You can find it here.

The Work of Salvation

So Easter Sunday has come and gone. It was a beautiful day. I enjoyed my time with my wife and daughter and with some new friends. We enjoyed a wonderful meal and the beautiful surroundings of Graylin Manor, then some quality time outside. It was such a great and blessed day.

So now what? Easter is only one day for most people in this country but in the Church Easter goes on for a few more weeks. We continue to reflect and rejoice on Christ's victory over death. So what about you and I?

I am always joyful on Easter Sunday. I feel great as we celebrate the Resurrection. I feel great as I spend time with family and enjoy the beautiful day. Then as the day wears on I find myself kind of wishing the day would not end. Like a kid at the end of spring break I don't want to go back to the day to day struggles of life. I want to be lost in the Resurrection every day.

Why do I lament the day after the Resurrection? As I pondered this question yesterday I came to one conclusion: for us as Christians we must go through many deaths to self and our sinful nature before we will truly experience resurrection. Put more simply, I know that there is a lot of work to do in order for me to truly experience Resurrection.

Yes, Christ died for my sins, he went deep into the pits of sinfulness and evil and rose victorious over sin and death - giving us a pathway to heaven. This is joyful news. This is news to celebrate. But this pathway to heaven takes work. In order for me to experience true resurrection I have many things to overcome in my life. I have to go through a lot more "good Friday's" and I have to go deep within and face the sinfulness and evil within. I do this with Christ as my healer and teacher of course, and he will help me to rise victorious over the sin and evil in my own life.

But God raised him up, having loosed the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. For David says concerning him, `I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken; therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced; moreover my flesh will dwell in hope. For thou wilt not abandon my soul to Hades. - Acts 2:24 - 27

I guess the hard part is not the work of healing sinfulness, because that work is not for me to do. It is taking that first step. Recognizing patterns of sin in my life is easy, admitting to them and taking them to Christ asking Him to heal them is the hardest part of all. But in today's first reading I am reminded that my "Lord [is] always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken." So as we begin this journey of Resurrection in our own life this Easter Season, let us "dwell in hop. For [God] will not abandon [our souls] to Hades."

I move forward in Hope, rejoicing in the Resurrection even as I die to my own selfishness, pride, greed, lust, envy, sloth, hatred, anger, vanity... Therefore my heart will be glad and my tongue will rejoice.

Joy of the Resurrection

Short and sweet today.

Today we celebrate with great joy the Resurrection of our Lord. He is Risen indeed.

Celebrate today, get lost in the Resurrection. Sometimes we have a hard time focusing on the good because there is so much in our lives we have to worry about. Today I pray that you get lost, get lost in celebrating the beauty of the Resurrection. Get lost in in thoughts of Heaven.

For me heaven is outside. I will be spending much of my day in the warm sunlight, with a cold drink in hand, getting lost in the blue sky and thanking Jesus for coming through for me.

Tomorrow I can get back to the everyday concerns, but today we stop, we celebrate, we get lost in the revolutionary love of the Cross and hope of the Resurrection.

With a joy-filled heart,
Chris Faddis