“He Took Me In His Arms and Placed Me There” — Abandonment and the Prophet Job
September, marked in many parts of the world by the changing of the seasons and the colours of nature, is marked in the Divine Office by the remembrance of the prophet Job. For many centuries now, Job has been read at Matins during the first few weeks of September. Is a timely reminder of the changing of the seasons of the year, and it acts as a preparation for the beginning of the Monastic Lent, a period of fasting lasting from September 14 until Easter. At the monastery, we ushered in our meditations upon Job on the Saturday before the first Sunday of September with the antiphon Cum audisset Job.
Ant. When Job had heard the words of all the messengers, he bore them patiently, and he said: If we have received good things from the hand of God, why may we can also receive bad things? In all these things, Job sinned not with his lips, nor uttered he any folly against God.
Then, last Saturday, we sang In omnibus his
In all these things, Job sinned not with his lips, nor did he speak anything foolish against God.
The story of Job puts me in mind of something St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face said concerning Job.
This saying of Job: ‘Although He should kill me, I will trust in Him,’ (Jb 13:15) has fascinated me from my childhood. But it took me a long time before I was established in this degree of abandonment. Now I am there; God has placed me there. He took me into His arms and placed me there.
Many of us can testify that it is not St. Thérèse alone who was fascinated with this quotation. How often in the spiritual life we find ourselves repeating this again and again. Sometimes, indeed, we must repeat it out loud, so that we can hear our own voice say it to us. “Even should He kill me, yet will I trust in Him.”
He Leadeth Me
It is a monastic custom to read an edifying book during the meals. We have reading the second book by Father Walter Ciszek, He Leadeth Me.
He Leadeth Me tells the spiritual side of the story of Fr. Ciszek’s 23 years in Russia, much of which was spent in interrogations and forced labour. The narrative side had already been told in With God in Russia (which we read earlier in the year).
A Salutary Fall
It was striking to hear Fr. Ciszek’s “conversion” (or what he terms his conversion) in tandem with Job.
At the point this happened in the story, Fr. Ciszek has already long been interrogated in Lubianka prision. Though innocent, he accused of the (to him, laughable) charge of being a Vatican spy. At last, at the end of his strength, an interrogator playing the nice guy got him to play along. He convinced himself that he wasn’t really lying or doing anything particularly wrong, that is until they compiled a lengthy statement for him to sign. In the panic of the moment, he signed every page. But back in the prison cell, he knew he had signed lies and betrayed all he stood for.
It was in that moment where he, like Job, sat in the metaphorical ashes of his failure (see Job 2:8) and reached the turning point in his life. Let us let him tell us what happened next.
The Lord’s Agony
I had to ask that that moment of despair had not made me unworthy of his help. I had to pray that he would never again let me fail to remember him and trust in him. I pleaded my helplessness to face the future without him. I told him that my own abilities were now bankrupt and he was my only hope. Suddenly, I was consoled by thoughts of our Lord and his agony in the garden. “Father,” he had said, “if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me.” In the Garden of Olives, he too knew the feeling of fear and weakness in his human nature as he faced suffering and death. Not once but three times did he ask to have his ordeal removed or somehow modified. Yet each time he concluded with an act of total abandonment and submission to the Father’s will. “Not as I will, but as thou wilt.” It was not just conformity to the will of God; it was total self-surrender, a stripping away of all human fears, of all doubts about his own abilities to withstand the passion, of every last shred of self including self-doubt.
A Conversion to Total Abandonment to Divine Providence
What a wonderful treasure and source of strength and consolation our Lord’s agony in the garden became for me from that moment on. I saw clearly exactly what I must do. I can only call it a conversion experience, and I can only tell you frankly that my life was changed from that moment on. If my moment of despair had been a moment of total blackness, then this was an experience of blinding light. I knew immediately what I must do, what I would do, and somehow I knew that I could do it. I knew that I must abandon myself entirely to the will of the Father and live from now on in this spirit of self-abandonment to God. And I did it. I can only describe the experience as a sense of letting go, giving over totally my last effort or even any will to guide the reins of my own life. It is all too simply said, yet that one decision has affected every subsequent moment of my life. I have to call it a conversion.
A New Vision of Man’s Role
…this was a new vision, a totally new understanding, something more than just a matter of emphasis. Up until now, I had always seen my role—man’s role—in the divine economy as an active one. Up to this time, I had retained in my own hands the reins of all decision, actions, and endeavors; I saw it now as my task to “cooperate” with his grace, to be involved to the end in the working out of salvation.
God’s Will was “Out There”
God’s will was “out there” somewhere, hidden, yet clear and unmistakable. It was my role — man’s role — to discover what it was and then conform my will to that, and so work at achieving the ends of his divine providence. I remained — man remained — in essence the master of my own destiny. Perfection consisted simply in learning to discover God’s will in every
situation and then in bending every effort to do what must be done.
His Copernican Turn
Now, with sudden and almost blinding clarity and simplicity, I realized I had been trying to do something with my own will and intellect that was at once too much and mostly all wrong. God’s will was not hidden somewhere “out there” in the situations in which I found myself; the situations themselves were his will for me. What he wanted was for me to accept these situations as from his hands, to let go of the reins and place myself entirely at his disposal. He was asking of me an act of total trust, allowing for no interference or restless striving on my part, no reservations, no exceptions, no areas where I could set conditions or seem to hesitate. He was asking a complete gift of self, nothing held back.
To Live by Faith
It demanded absolute faith: faith in God’s existence, in his providence in his concern for the minutest detail, in his power to sustain me, and in his love protecting me. It meant losing the last hidden doubt, the ultimate fear that God will not be there to bear you up. It was something like that awful eternity between anxiety and belief when a child first leans back and lets go of all support, only to find that the water truly holds him up and he can float motionless and totally relaxed.
A Simple Truth
Once understood, it seemed so simple. I was amazed it had taken me so long in terms of time and of suffering to learn this.
Of course, we believe that we depend on God, that his will sustains us in every moment of our life. But we are afraid to put it to the test. There remains deep down in each of us a little nagging doubt, a little knot of fear which we refuse to face or admit even to ourselves, that says, “Suppose it isn’t so.” We are afraid to abandon ourselves totally into God’s hands for fear he will not catch us as we fall. It is the ultimate criterion, the final test of all faith and all belief, and it is present in each of us, lurking unvoiced in a closet of our mind we are afraid to open. It is not really a question of trust in God at all, for we want very much to trust him; it is really a question of our ultimate belief in his existence and his providence, and it demands the purest act of faith.
A Perfect Act of Faith; Complete Self-Abandonment to His Will
For my part, I was brought to make this perfect act of faith, this act of complete self-abandonment to his will, of total trust in his love and concern for me and his desire to sustain and protect me, by the experience of a complete despair of my own powers and abilities that had preceded it. I knew I could no longer trust myself, and it seemed only sensible then to trust totally in God. It was the grace God had been offering me all my life, but which I had never really had the courage to accept in full. I had talked of finding and doing his will, but never in the sense of totally giving up my own will. I had talked of trusting him, indeed I truly had trusted him, but never in the sense of abandoning all other sources of support and relying on his grace alone. I could never find it in me, before, to give up self completely. There were always boundaries beyond which I would not go, little hedges marking out what I knew in the depths of my being was a point of no return. God in his providence had been constant in his grace, always providing opportunities for this act of perfect faith and trust in him, always urging me to let go the reins and trust in him alone. I had trusted him, I had cooperated with his grace – but only up to a point.
“He Took Me in His Arms and Placed Me There”
Only when I had reached a point of total bankruptcy of my own powers had I at last surrendered. That moment, that experience, completely changed me. I can say it now in all sincerity, without false modesty, without a sense either of exaggeration or of embarrassment. I have to call it a conversion experience; it was at once a death and a resurrection.
The Sacrament of the Present Moment
It is in choosing to serve God, to do his will, that man achieves his highest and fullest freedom. It may seem paradoxical to say that our highest and fullest freedom comes when we follow to the least detail the will of another, but it is true nonetheless when that other is God. I could testify from my own experiences, especially from my darkest hours in Lubianka, that the greatest freedom, along with peace of soul and an abiding sense of security, comes when a man totally abandons his own will as in order to follow the will of God. Never again could I doubt that the greatest assurance I could have in my life came from knowing and willingly following God’s will as manifested to me. I knew only too well how shallow and unsafe it was for me to follow my own will, my own inclinations and desires, unless they were conformity to his. I realized then, and I felt it more deeply each day, that true freedom meant nothing else than letting God operate within my soul without interference, giving preference to God’s will as manifested in the promptings, inspirations, and other means he chose to communicate, rather than in acting on my own initiatives.
