Total Surrender
On a couple of occasions I have caught wind of a devotion that has piqued my interest. I had heard of it on and off, but nothing really struck a chord. Then one day I knew I had to do a bit more research and get to the bottom of it.
The devotion is entitled “The Surrender Novena.” An Italian priest who died in 1970 began this novena to surrender his entire life into God’s hands. As you pray the novena, it is Our Lord who is speaking to the individual. Each day has a short meditation inviting us to relinquish our own wills, dreams, and desires. At the end of each of the days’ meditations, the individual response is to repeat 10 times, “O Jesus, I surrender myself to You, take care of everything!”
So often I find myself telling God how things should happen. I instruct Him how he should fix problems and resolve minor (and major) crises. I’m sure we all do this. Whether it is an issue in our family, or at work; around town or in parish life, we try to resolve things ourselves. Even worse, we tell God and His people how things should go.
Deep down all of us know that we are powerless. We don’t know if we’ll be given a serious medical diagnosis, lose our jobs, or get transferred to a different parish. We live in uncertainty and we try to grasp at some sort of control of the situation. Take my word for it, this rarely works out well. Even if we get what we want, sometimes part of us dies in the process.
What is the answer? Total surrender into Jesus’ hands. We surrender our future, our lives, our plans, and our successes into Our Lord’s hands. The meditation on the first day of the novena reads, “Why do you confuse yourselves by worrying? Leave the care of your affairs to Me and everything will be peaceful. I say to you in truth that every act of true, blind, complete surrender to Me produces the effect that you desire and resolves all difficult situations.”
Total surrender into God’s hands is no easy task, but it is a journey worth making. No matter what the arena of life: family, work, friends, parish, the Beacons of Light, or anything else. We must surrender everything to Jesus or else we may find ourselves fighting against God.
It takes steps to get to a point where we are ready to surrender to Jesus. Some people may not even know Jesus. With this in mind, a little pitch is in order for Alpha. As you can see on the cover of the bulletin, we are gearing up for another season of Alpha in Botkins. Please prayerfully ask the Lord if there is anyone in your life that may benefit from Alpha. Just invite them to the first night and if they don’t like it, they don’t have to show up again.
Be like the sower in the parable who sows seeds all over the place. Some of it lands on the path, some amidst thorns, some in the weeds, and some in fertile soil. Our job is not to ask the right person, but to ask many and surrender the results to God. We simply scatter as much seed, offer as many invitations as possible and then surrender. Let Jesus do the rest.
So please invite as many people as you can. Maybe they’re fallen away Catholics, maybe they have never heard the Gospel. Simply make the invitation; eternal salvation may rest upon our invitation to faith and the Gospel.
The goal of Alpha and the goal of the Surrender Novena is to invite people into a deeper trust and abandonment to God. If you are interested in a copy of the Surrender Novena, just ask me sometime. I normally keep some copies in the pockets of my cassock.
Sincerely in the love of Jesus,
Fr. Sean Wilson
