Fr. Bjorn Lundberg gives advice to a caller who knows mentally that she trusts God, but doesn’t always feel a conviction of belief in her heart.
Transcript:
Caller: I am not necessarily struggling with trusting God as a conscious decision, but what I struggle with is that I don’t always feel like I’m trusting God. And so I get frustrated with myself, and I’m wondering what advice you might have, for patience as I grow in this area spiritually, but also to help understand the difference between knowing that I do, mentally, trust God, but then also feeling—I want to feel like I trust God too, but I know that those feelings don’t always come. What advice would you have for something like that, Father?
Fr. Bjorn: Right, that’s a great question. A kid was just asking me that at school today, actually. And part of the challenge is, like—you know, sometimes—I’ll go on a little tangent quickly: people say “I don’t feel consolations in prayer.” And there’s this kind of line: “Do we like the consolations of God, or the God of consolations?” Meaning that the feelings are great, and we certainly prefer to have good feelings, but a lot of times it seems like God is leading us on this trust walk where we don’t feel anything. You know, we’re doing the right thing.
So the first thing to discern is: “Am I doing God’s will?” You know, depending on your state of life or your vocation, you look first to say “What are my duties?” For example, you know, a person can be married and have all these demands on them, and they say, “Oh I would love to spend all kinds of time in front of the Blessed Sacrament at Church,” you know, or same thing, as a parish priest, or whatever, if you’re a college student, you’re busy, “But I wanna pray.” Well, right, it’s good to pray and spend time with the Lord, but maybe God is calling me to study, or to work, or to help my family. So the first thing is, just kind of broadly speaking, to find out: “What is the path that I know God wants me to do?”
The next thing would then be to find, in your particular area of life, what are some steps spiritually so that you kind of have, you know, benchmarks throughout the day to stay connected with God? Somebody made the analogy that in the morning you offer your day to God, and at the end of the day you do an examination of conscience, but throughout the day you wanna have kind of—like a pole where that cable will connect, like a telephone pole. So like, maybe doing the Angelus, or some interior prayer, or the rosary, or Scripture reading; ‘cause that cable that goes between the phone lines along the highway, that’s kind of symbolic of God’s presence. We want to be aware of His presence throughout the day. A friend of mine carries a ball in his pocket, a little bouncy ball, and he sticks his hand in there to remind himself that God has him, that he’s in God’s hands.
So as far as feeling bad about not feeling trusting: as long as we’re stepping out in faith, going in the right direction, discerning that we’re on the path God wants us to be; that is good. Because ultimately what we’re doing is, we’re putting down roots. Like, the tree analogy would be: if there’s a tree, and a drought comes, and the waters fade, the tree is gonna push the roots deeper into the rocky, hard ground. And that’s very difficult. But then when the drought passes, the root structure is better. So when God leads you forward to trust Him, most of the time we don’t feel like trusting Him. Like Mother said faith was like having—Mother Angelica said faith was like having one foot on the ground, one foot in the air, and a funny feeling in your stomach.
So as long as we’re choosing to do the right thing, and we’re trying to nourish our spiritual relationship with God, and then we’re living according to our state in life; then we just, you know, move forward and trust that God has us. And on top of that, then, I would add, and especially: having devotion to Our Lady or to a saint that you particularly love or speaks to you will help you. Because for me, if I read St. Therese, or I read, you know, St. Louis de Montfort, John Paul, Josemaria; they—there’s something there that will usually give me—that will nourish my spirit. So I hope that helps.
Host: Thank you so much, Lacie, for that call.