OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

MIGUEL ÁNGEL FUENTES

OBSERVATIONS
ABOUT TRUST
“Mercy surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord”
(Ps 32:10)

Chillum—2016
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 Table of Contents

1. What is Trust ................................................................... 13

2. The Foundation of Trust ................................................. 17

3. The Importance of Trust ................................................. 21

4. How to Trust ...................................................................23

1) Trust requires reason without prejudices ........................................... 24
2) Trust requires faith (be it human or divine) ....................................... 25
3) Trust and humility .................................................................................. 28

5. Prayer and Trust .............................................................. 31

6. Why trust in God? ............................................................37

7. Distrust and other Vices Contrary to this Virtue .............43

1) Distrust ..................................................................................................... 43
2) Misplaced trust ........................................................................................ 44
3) Fear of our miseries................................................................................ 46
4) Confused trust ......................................................................................... 47

8. The Most Perfect Act of Trust: Abandonment ................49

9. Spiritual Childhood .........................................................53

1) What is spiritual childhood?.................................................................. 53
2) The practice of spiritual childhood...................................................... 56
3) Teaching spiritual childhood ................................................................ 61

10. Trust and the Sacred Heart of Jesus ..............................63

11. Fruits of Trust ................................................................67

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OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

8
Introduction

It is strange that one of the fundamental attitudes of life, such

as trust, which is alluded to so much in daily life, is the object of
so few extensive and explicit writings.1 St. Thomas, who studied
the human passions and the divine and natural virtues
exhaustively, dedicates only one article to trust within the treaty

1The widest known is that of Paul de Jaegher, Confianza (Bilbao: Mensajero

del Corazón de Jesús, 1960). One can mention others that treat more or less of
this theme, almost always in relation to the mercy, providence, or will of God,
but without explicitly considering the nature of this virtue. For example, Carlos
Cuadrúpani, Confianza en Dios: Guía segura y consuelo infalible de almas atribuladas y
pecadores pusilánimes (Gerona, 1846) (this author follows the doctrine of the saints,
in particular that of Francis de Sales); Languet, Juan Joseph, Tratado de la confianza
en la misericordia de Dios, (Cambray, 1825); Suárez and Núñez, Gerónimo, El
consuelo del Christiano o motivos de la confianza en Dios en las diversas circunstancias de la
vida (Madrid, 1795) (A work taken from the writings of Abate Poyssard);
Lehodey, Vital, El santo abandono (Ediciones Rialp, S.A.: Madrid, 1981); Caussade,
J. P., Abandonment to Divine Providence (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011). There
are also some sources regarding trust in the realms of labor and business that are
not related with what we are treating here.
*English Bible Quotations taken from the NAB version
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 OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

on magnanimity,2 and alludes to it in a few other places such as,

for example, the treaty on the parts of fortitude,3 and frugally
while speaking of hope,4 of prayer,5 and in other questions where
it is mentioned in an indirect manner.

And yet we find many exhortations to trust in the Scriptures,

and some are of greatest poetic depth:

“O Lord of hosts, happy are those who trust in you!”

(Ps 84: 13).

“Cast your care upon the Lord, who will give you support.
God will never allow the righteous to stumble” (Ps 55: 23).

“Commit your way to the Lord; trust that God will act and
make your integrity shine like the dawn, your vindication like
noonday” (Ps 37: 5-6).

“Love surrounds those who trust in the Lord” (Ps 32:10).

“Those who fear the Lord trust in the Lord, who is their help
and shield” (Ps 115: 11).

“He who plans a thing will be successful; happy is he who

trusts in the Lord!” (Pr 16: 20).

“Trust in the Lord and he will help you” (Pr 20: 22).

“He who trusts in the Lord is safe” (Pr 29: 25).

“Trust in the Lord forever! For the Lord is an eternal Rock”

(Is 26: 4).

2 Cf. Summa Theologica (ST) II-II, q. 129, a. 6.

3 Cf. ST II-II, q. 128
4 Cf. ST I-II, q. 40, a. 2.
5 Cf. ST II-II, q. 83.

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 INTRODUCTION

“You shall return by the help of your God, if you remain loyal
and do right and always hope in your God.” (Hosea 12:7)

From the New Testament, the words of Jesus directed to the

woman with a hemorrhage suffice as an adequate expression of
this beautiful disposition: confide filia fides tua te salvam fecit,
“Courage daughter! Your faith has saved you” (Mt 9:22). Our
Lord commands us to trust in Him in many ways, even without
using this expression; for example, by encouraging us to not be
afraid (“do not fear”), when he teaches us to trust in Divine
Providence, when he teaches us about the goodness and constant
assistance of God the Father, etc.

But what distrust we find in the heart of man! We distrust

God, our friends, those around us, and our own families. And, on
the contrary, we trust in things that are of no support, with which
we travel a road more apt to weakening our trust, since these false
supports infallibly end in deceiving us, opening the door to
skepticism. How many people who want to trust don’t know how
to do so!

There is truly a crisis of trust.

Perhaps because we don’t truly even know what it is to trust.

I am going to dedicate these pages to trust, centering

principally on trust in God. In the measure that it be possible and
useful, I will also make some clarifications regarding the trust that
we owe to other men.

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OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

12
1.

What Trust is

Trust, as St. Thomas explains in a concise formula, is not

distinct from hope but the same “hope strengthened by a strong
opinion.”6 Moreover:

Confidence takes its name from fides (faith): and it belongs to

faith to believe something and in somebody. But confidence
belongs to hope, according to Job 11:18, Thou shalt have
confidence, hope being set before thee. Wherefore confidence
apparently denotes chiefly that a man derives hope through
believing the word of the one who promises to help him.
Since, however, faith signifies also a strong opinion, and since
one may come to have a strong opinion about something, not
only on account of another’s statement, but also on account of
something we observe in another, it follows that confidence
may denote the hope of having something, which hope we
conceive through observing something either in oneself – for
instance, through observing that he is healthy, a man is
confident that he will live long; or in another, for instance,
through observing that another is friendly to him and

6 ST II-II, q. 129, a. 6 ad 3.
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 OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

powerful, a man is confident that he will receive help from

him. Now it has been stated above (A. 1, ad 2) that
magnanimity is chiefly about the hope of something difficult.
Wherefore, since confidence demotes a certain strength of
hope arising from some observation which gives me a strong
opinion that one will obtain a certain good, it follows that
confidence belongs to magnanimity.7
As we can observe in the cited text, trust is related to three
virtues: faith, hope, and magnanimity. If we continue reading the
same article we will find that it is also related to fortitude.8

To tell the truth, excepting the cases in which we use the word
“trust” as a synonym of faith or hope (as often happens, and
when it can only be distinguished by the context in which the
word is found), trust is related to all of these virtues but cannot be
completely confused with any of them. “Hence, properly
speaking,” says Aquinas, “confidence cannot denote a virtue,
though it may denote the conditions of a virtue.”9 This means that
it concerns more an “integral part” of these virtues, like the heart
or the head are parts of a man, although the man cannot be
reduced to either his heart or his head.

7 ST II-II, q. 129, a. 6, corpus.

8 “As stated above (I-II, q. 23, a. 2 – q. 40, a. 4), when we were treating of
the passions, hope is directly opposed to despair, because the latter is about the
same object, namely good. But as regards contrariety of objects it is opposed to
fear, because the latter’s object is evil. Now confidence denotes a certain strength
of hope, wherefore it is opposed to fear even as hope is. Since, however,
fortitude properly strengthens a man in respect of evil, and magnanimity in
respect of the obtaining of good, if follows that confidence belongs more
properly to magnanimity than to fortitude. Yet because hope causes daring,
which belongs to fortitude, it follows in consequence that confidence pertains to
fortitude.”(ST II-II, q. 129, a. 6, ad 2).
9 ST II-II, q. 129, a. 6, ad. 2. Emphasis added.

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 WHAT TRUST IS

There are other virtues that have very important integral parts,
as in the case of prudence, in which the memory, the capacity to
know things by intuition and to reason adequately,
circumspection, precaution, and providence are found as its parts.
None of these are virtues in the strict sense, they are more like
“species” of prudence, if you will, but because of this they do not
cease to have an important function nor cease to demand specific work
to acquire or increase. In general, when one works on the integral
part of a virtue, what grows is the virtue of which it forms a part.
In the same way, when one is working on trust, the repercussion
is the growth above all in faith, hope, magnanimity, and valor.

From the description offered above by St. Thomas we can

define trust as the attitude that makes us rely on someone that we
judge, with particular certainty, as disposed to help us. Here we
have points of contact and distinction with the virtues we have
mentioned.

Trust approaches faith because faith inclines us to accept the

testimony of someone as worthy of being believed by his
authority; because of this, we believe all that God tells us, since he
is infinitely wise and holy, because, firstly, he knows everything,
and secondly, he cannot lie to us. Trust forms part of this
movement of faith, but faith ends in a formally intellectual
adherence (to Truth, the object or content; spoken by the Truth,
the subject or God who reveals), while trust can go beyond the
intellectual contents.

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 OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

In effect, when we rely on another because they are powerful to

help us and love us enough to use this power in our favor, it
becomes hope: by the latter we trust that we will obtain
something that surpasses our strength through the goodness of
someone or something more powerful than ourselves who offers
us his help. In the case of theological hope, we hope to obtain
nothing less than God Himself (possessing Him eternally) by the
omnipotent mercy of God that He generously offers to us.

Finally, since trust makes the soul throw itself with security
into truly important things, it is transformed into magnanimity
(the tending of the soul to truly great and valiant endeavors) and
into courage and virility (because it expels the fears that diminish
the soul).

Father Michael Sopocko, spiritual director of St. Faustina

Kowalska, wrote, “Trust . . . does not constitute a separate virtue,
but is an essential condition of the virtue of hope, and an integral
part of the virtues of fortitude and generosity. Because trust
springs from faith, it strengthens hope and love, and is, moreover,
linked, in one way or another, with the moral virtues. It may,
therefore, be called the basis on which the theological virtues
unite with the moral. The moral virtues, originally natural, become
supernatural if we practice them with trust in God’s help.”10

10 Michael Sopocko, Vol. III of The Mercy of God in His Works, trans. R.

Batchelor (Stockbridge, MA: Marian Apostolate, 1962), 189.

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2.

The Foundation of Trust

In every case, trust retains that which is proper to itself: relying

on someone or something, which implies resting and being
supported, and also throwing oneself into certain things feeling
oneself to be supported.

Trusting that his companions are covering his back, the

soldier advances against the enemy. Trusting that they are
supporting him from above, the mountain climber begins a
dangerous descent anchored by a single rope; trusting in future
help, we embark on risky business; trusting that they will keep our
secrets, we open our conscience to our confessor, spiritual
director, or friend.

As we can observe, the basis of trust is what the Angelic

Doctor calls a “firm estimation.” It regards a sure and firm
judgment or conviction about certain qualities of a person or

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 OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

thing: stability (the worker who works on a scaffold is calm

because he esteems that the platform he stands on is solid),
authority (we trust because we regard that the person teaching us
knows well of what he speaks), sincerity (we trust because we
judge that our teachers are not deliberately misrepresenting their
knowledge), and above all, benevolence or good-will (we trust
because we understand that the person in whom we trust loves us
and so will not lie to, abandon, or betray us).

Trust then depends, in the final place, on the concept that we have
of the person in whom we trust. If we consider that person as
powerful to resolve our problems and at the same time good and
well-intentioned with respect to us, that is to say, “worthy of
trust,” we trust them. In contrast, if we have reasons to doubt
some fundamental aspect of their person or attitude toward us,
that is to say, if we are not sure of their knowledge, power,
truthfulness, benevolence, generosity or disinterest...we do not
trust fully.

From here it follows that trust in God depends, in the final

analysis, on the idea that we have of God. And it must be agreed
upon that many people do not trust fully in God because they
have a very poor, and in some cases mistaken, idea of Him. “Our
spiritual life depends mainly on the concept that we ourselves
form of God. Between God and ourselves, there are certain
fundamental relations which are inherent in our nature as
creatures, but there are other relations which spring from our
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 THE FOUNDATION OF TRUST

own attitude towards God; and this attitude depends on our idea
of Him. If we form false concepts of the Lord Most High, our
relationship with Him will be wrong, and all our efforts to set it
right will be in vain. If we have a distorted idea of Him, there are
bound to be many gaps and imperfections in our spiritual life. If,
on the other hand, our concept of Him is—as far as is humanly
possible—true, our souls will, quite certainly, grow in holiness
and light. The concept of God is, then, the key to holiness, for it
governs our conduct in relation to God, and God’s attitude
towards us. […] Man’s distrust of God […] comes from
transferring our own faults and weaknesses to Him, and
attributing to Him what we see in ourselves. We imagine God to
be as changeable and capricious as we are—as stern and gloomy
as we are—and so on. Such faults and behavior are an insult to
God, and do us great harm. Where should we be now, if He who
guides our destinies were as capricious, as vengeful, as quick to
take offense, as we sometimes imagine? Our mistaken concept of
God, and our tendency to transfer our own shortcomings to
Him, are due to our weakness and sadness, our ceaseless fears
and our inner anxiety-human failings which exist almost
everywhere.”11

11 Sopocko, The Mercy of God in His Works, 189-200.

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OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

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3.

The Importance of Trust

Trust is the foundation of all human relations: the relationship

between parents and children, marriage, friendship, discipleship,
commercial relations and all contracts, spiritual direction and
confession. This is the reason why those acts that undermine the
basis of trust, such as lying, fraud, hypocrisy, and half-truths, are of
themselves grave. Often we say, quite inappropriately, “lying is, most
of the time, a minor sin.” We should not say this, but rather,
“lying is of itself a grave sin, but in some cases it could happen
that it is not more than a minor sin, if the harm that it causes
against the truth is not excessively considerable.” And it is said
thus so as not to minimize the damage that this attitude causes in
society, since the sins we have just mentioned eat-away at trust,
which is the basis of social life. A professor who speaks as if he
knows about something of which he is ignorant transmits to us
distrust of all that he says and has said. Which doctrines should

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 OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

we accept with tranquility and which should we place in doubt? If

a seller exaggerates the quality of his products, when can we
believe him? How do we distinguish the true from the false in the
things he tells us? What credit can we give to those politicians
whose campaigns promise what they don’t intend to accomplish,
or promise to avoid what in reality they will do if it favors them?

Without trust, a society disintegrates.

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4.

How to Trust

We have said that trust is forged starting from the esteem we

have for a person; we trust someone when we esteem that the
qualities of that person can guarantee us what we hope from him.
This implies a double perception: that this person can help us, and
the he wants to do so. But another condition must be added to
this: that I want to let myself be helped, which demands, in its turn, a
double attitude: that Í perceive my need, and that I allow another to see
me as someone who needs help. There are, then, four fundamental
conditions:

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 OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

In this regard, various virtues necessary for trust remain to be

addressed, in particular, humility and faith.

1) Trust requires reason without

prejudices
In order to trust, above all, we must use our reason without
prejudices. That is, putting aside the blindness and stubbornness of
those who believe that intellectual maturity consists in calling all
truth into question. The wise man does not complicate things like
the ignorant man, because he knows the principle that gives
consistency to all the truths of his knowledge, while the ignorant
man, in his ignorance, reasons like one walking in a labyrinth; he
who is deeply familiar with a land can take us to any point by the
shortest road, but he who knows it only superficially goes in
useless circles and often gets lost.

Because of this, it will not cost us so much to trust if we

reason well, if we are good students of what things teach us,
because by reason we reach the truths that underlie trust: divine
omnipotence (if God is God, then he is the creator, sustainer, and
Lord of all; whatever he wants to do – as long as it isn’t
contradictory – he can; and if he has created us, with even greater
reason can he help us in our needs), Divine Providence (God is
indeed good and puts his omnipotence at the service of all beings,
even those most insignificant on the ladder of creation), and
God’s predilection for human beings (if he provides for the most
insignificant beings, with greater reason must he want to help us,

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 HOW TO TRUST

whom he has placed at the height of creation). For this reason,

when Jesus wants to teach us these truths, he appeals to our
intelligence: “Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or
reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father
feeds them... Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do
not work or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his
splendor was clothed like one of them” (Mt. 6:26, 28). Only
fools who think themselves great ignore these things (cf. Mt.
11:25).

2) Trust requires faith (be it human or

divine)
Trust demands a firm knowledge of the capacity that a person or
thing (such as, for example, my muscles or my intelligence) has to
grant me what I need in order to reach a determined end. This
firm knowledge always implies an act of faith because it regards
something in the future. The boxer who feels most assured of his
muscles, his reflexes, and his skill for conquering his adversary is
making a human and natural act of faith because, although the
experience of his past fights inclines him not to doubt his victory,
this fight still hasn’t existed yet, and the reflexes that have never
failed him before could fail this time. As the song says:

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 OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

“No one sings of victory

though he be in the saddle,

since many in the saddle

often end up on foot.”

Trust in God (the confidence of obtaining supernatural goods

and departing from sin) requires supernatural faith. Faith, with an
infinitely clearer and higher light than that of natural reason,
teaches and assures us that God is all powerful and that he puts
his omnipotence at our service. “If God so clothes the grass of
the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven
tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little
faith?” (Mt 6:30). And so St. Alphonsus de Ligouri said that
“faith leads to trust and trust to love.” We should trust
completely just as Mary most-holy trusted at the wedding of Cana,
even when the words that she heard from her son seemed to give
the impression that he was not planning to work anything
extraordinary for those for whom his mother interceded.
Unperturbed, she says simply to the servants, “Do whatever he
tells you,” and this draws forth the Son’s miracle.

Trust also demands faith in the good will of God toward us and
likewise in the efficacy of the means that he offers us.

Above all, trust is born of the faith that God is our Father,
which many do not manage to properly understand, even though
it has been the teaching that is most repeated by Our Lord Jesus

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 HOW TO TRUST

Christ.12 Trust becomes difficult for many because they don’t

possess a correct appreciation for God’s Paternity, often because
they project on Him the negative experiences that they have of
men.

The faith demanded by trust is not a merely theoretical faith,

but an active faith. Trust is not a passive act, but is eminently
laborious. Peter, seeing Jesus on the waters, says, “Lord, if it is
you, command me to come to you.” And the Lord doesn’t reply,
“It’s not necessary; I’m already coming to you,” but rather,
“Come!” that is, “Take courage, and walk on the water trusting
that I will not let you sink.” Another example of trusting faith is
Abraham who time and again relying on the divine promise, and
supported only by the word of God, launches on an interminable
journey to an unknown land with a sterile wife, without ever
wavering. “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go
out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; he went
out, not knowing where he was to go. By faith he sojourned in
the promised land as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with
Isaac and Jacob, heirs of the same promise; for he was looking
forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and maker is
God” (Hb 11:8-10).

12 Confer our small writing: El Padre revelado por Jesucristo, Virtus/8, San Rafael

(2008).
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 OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

3) Trust and humility

Humility is also necessary to be able to trust. Humility makes
us recognize that, of ourselves, we can do very little (and in some
cases nothing); it allows us to perceive ourselves as limited and in
need of others. The person who feels self-sufficient and powerful
will never become trusting. Nor will he who, out of pride or vanity,
avoids letting others see him as needy. There are people who prefer to
ruin their lives rather than recognize that they need help.

This humility, in some way, consists in “making ourselves like

children.” The Lord says, “unless you turn and become like
children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 18:3).
This is the attitude that made St. Faustina Kowalska pray, “With
the trust and simplicity of a small child, I give myself to You
today, O Lord Jesus, my Master. I leave you complete freedom in
directing my soul. Guide me along the paths You wish. I won’t
question them. I will follow you trustingly. Your merciful Heart
can do all things!”13

When a person, through humility, becomes a child again, he in

some way relearns the trust that was the first attitude
spontaneously born in him. Because if I’m not mistaken (and I
well could err in this), trust is what is born in a natural way in a
child; in contrast, what is “learned” is distrust, that is to say, bad
experiences and frustrations corrode the trust that is born as the
first attitude of human beings.

13 Saint Faustina Kowalska, Diary, Divine Mercy in my Soul (Stockbridge, MA:

Marian Press, 2010), 115, notebook 1, n. 105.

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 HOW TO TRUST

Let us explain.

St. Thomas says that old people are distrustful because they
have experienced many defects in others;14 in contrast, young
people are full of hope (which aids trust) because they haven’t yet
experienced many failures and difficulties.15 This is pointing to
the priority in nature (genetics) of trust over suspicion. The first
thing that a human being learns is to trust: he does it from his
mother’s womb, where he moves with an extraordinary tranquility
because he lives and grows naturally and spontaneously trusting in
her who protects and gives him life. I am not saying that he is
merely “unconscious” of the dangers that lie in wait, which is
obvious since he does not yet enjoy the use of reason, but that he
feels safe and establishes a true affective communication with his
mother; this still irrational affection is a mode of trust. But
although it may not yet be a rational phenomenon, it is
nevertheless a reality: the baby notices when he is desired and loved
and when he is rejected, because the sentiments of his mother are
also sensible phenomena, and he can perceive them. If an animal
perceives with its estimative sense who appreciates it, who fears it,
and who abhors it, and trusts in one and distrusts the other, with
greater reason is this true for a child. Perhaps this regards only
instinctive reactions or a very elemental development of
cognition, but it is certain that the baby, even in the mother’s
womb, is frightened, suffers, is happy, and perceives security or
threats. And this sensible trust, which is born of the positive

14 ST II-II, q. 60, a. 3.
15 ST I-II, q. 40, a. 6.
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 OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

regard that makes the child feel attended to, nourished, or cared
for, continues past birth and overflows onto the father, siblings,
and rest of the family environment. We can understand, then,
that trauma resulting in a child perceiving that he is not loved by his
mother can even occur in the time of gestation. For this reason
we say that, in many cases, what is learned is distrust. The child
who perceives that he has been deceived or that he is abandoned
by his mother or father, or who is neglected, or who suffers
abuse, or is unappreciated... often suffers from a frustration of his
confidence, a regression in this natural trust which had grown while he
was tranquilly reposing in the womb or the arms of his mother.

This becoming like children is not always possible with respect

to other human beings, who can fail us, but it is always possible and
absolutely necessary with respect to God. We will return to this later
when explaining “spiritual childhood.”

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5.

Prayer and Trust

Trust is manifested in many attitudes, such as peace,

tranquility, the absence of worries, and the lack of fear, but just
like hope, it finds its principal expression in prayer. “Prayer is an
expression of hope,” St. Thomas says.16 And in a similar way
Benedict XVI says, “A first essential setting for learning hope is
prayer. When no one listens to me anymore, God still listens to
me. When I can no longer talk to anyone or call upon anyone, I
can always talk to God. When there is no longer anyone to help
me deal with a need or expectation that goes beyond the human
capacity for hope, he can help me. When I have been plunged
into complete solitude...; if I pray I am never totally alone.”17

Now if prayer shows (and exercises) hope, it is through trust,

which is a quality of hope, that one hopes properly speaking. I

16 ST II-II, q. 17, a. 2, obj. 2.

17 Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 32.
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 OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

ask for that which I hope and because I hope, and I ask because I
trust that I will be heard or that I will receive what I ask. The hopeless
person does not ask, since neither does he trust in him whom he
should ask.

But although it may not be possible to pray if one doesn’t

have trust, it seems that, in contrast, one can pray (ask for
something) when one has little trust. According to the apostle
James this is the reason why prayer does not obtain what one
asks. More precisely, the first of the qualities that prayer should
have is confidence (the others are rectitude, order, devotion, and
humility). “We must confidently approach the throne of grace, as
it says in Hebrews 4:16. Moreover, we must do so with the faith
that doesn’t fail, as James (1:6) says, ‘he should ask in faith, not
doubting.’”18

In one of the first Christian writings, The Shepherd by Hermas,

written around the year 140, he teaches by way of a dialogue
between the author and an angel, the way to pray with
confidence:

And he [the angel] said to me: “Remove from yourself double-

mindedness, and be not at all double-minded about asking
anything from God, saying in yourself, How can I ask
anything from the Lord and receive it after having sinned so
greatly against him? Do not have these thoughts but ‘turn to
the Lord with all your heart,’ and ask from him without
doubting, and you shall know his great mercifulness, that he

18 St. Thomas, Commentary on the Our Father, prologue. Editorial translation.

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will not desert you, but will fulfil the petition of your soul. For
God is not as men who bear malice, but is himself without
malice, and has mercy on that which he made. Therefore
purify your heart from all the vanities of this world, and from
the words which were spoken to you beforehand, and ask
from the Lord, and you shall receive all things, and shall not
fail to obtain any of your petitions, if you ask from the Lord
without doubting. But if you doubt in your heart, you shall
receive none of your petitions. For those who have doubts
towards God, these are the double-minded, and they shall not
in any wise obtain any of their petitions. But they who are
perfect in faith ask for all things, ‘trusting in the Lord,’ and
they receive them, because they ask without doubting, and are
double-minded in nothing. For every double-minded man,
unless he repent, shall with difficulty be saved. Therefore
purify your heart from double-mindedness, but put on faith,
because it is mighty, and believe God, that you shall obtain all
your requests which you make. And if ever you make any
petition from the Lord, and receive it but slowly, do not be
double-minded because you have not received the request of
your soul speedily, for in every case it is because of some
temptation or some transgression, of which you are ignorant,
that you receive your request slowly. Do not therefore cease
from making the request of your soul, and you shall receive it.
But if you grow weary, and are double-minded in your request,
blame yourself and not him who gives to you. Consider this
double-mindedness; for it is wicked and foolish, and uproots
many from the faith, yes, even those who are very faithful and
strong. For this double-mindedness is the daughter of the
devil, and commits much wickedness against the servants of
God. Despise therefore double-mindedness, and master it in
every act, putting on the faith which is strong and powerful.
For faith promises all things, perfects all things. But the
33
 OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

double-mindedness which has no full faith in itself fails in all

deeds which it undertakes. You see, then,” said he, “that faith
is from above, from the Lord, and has great power; but
double-mindedness is an earthly spirit, from the devil, and has
no power. Do you, therefore, serve the faith which has power,
and refrain from the double-mindedness which has no power,
and you shall live to God, and all who have this mind shall live
to God.19
Asking without doubting does not mean that God is going to
grant us all that we ask in an automatic way, because trust is the
first condition for prayer but not the only one. If a son asks
without confidence, perhaps his father will not grant him what he
asks; but if he asks with all confidence that his father give him a
snake, or he asks that each time he acts badly his father give him
a prize, the confidence of his supplication will not be a sufficient
motive for the petition to be granted. God grants us all that we
ask on the condition that it be necessary and convenient to reach
our end.

St. Thomas explains in the Summa Theologica that prayer is

always meritorious (given that it proceeds from charity and grace)
as regards to the principal end to which all merit is ordered,
which is eternal life; but whether one obtains other things that
one asks for in prayer depends on other conditions:

Sometimes the merit of prayer regards chiefly something

distinct from the object of one’s petition. For the chief object

19 Mandate 9 of “The Shepherd of Hermas,” in vol. II of The Apostolic

Fathers, trans. Kirsopp Lake (G. P. Putnam’s Sons: New York, 1917), 107-111.
34
 PRAYER AND TRUST

of merit is beatitude, whereas the direct object of the petition

of prayer extends sometimes to certain other [temporal]things
as stated above (AA 6, 7). Accordingly if this other thing that
we ask for ourselves be not useful for our beatitude, we do
not merit it; and sometimes by asking for and desiring such
things we lose merit, for instance if we ask of God the
accomplishment of some sin, which would be an impious
prayer. And sometimes it is not necessary for salvation, nor
yet manifestly contrary thereto; and then although he who
prays may merit eternal life by praying, yet he does not merit
to obtain what he asks for. Hence Augustine says (Liber
Sentent. Prosperi sent. ccxii): He who faithfully prays God for the
necessaries of this life, is both mercifully heard, and mercifully not heard.
For the physician knows better than the sick man what is good for the
disease. For this reason too, Paul was not heard when he
prayed for the removal of the sting in his flesh, because this
was not expedient. If however, we pray for something that is
useful for our beatitude through being conducive to salvation,
we merit it not only by praying, but also by doing other good
deeds: therefore without any doubt we receive what we ask
for, yet when we ought to receive it: since certain things are not
denied us, but are deferred that they may be granted at a suitable time,
according to Augustine (Tract. cii. in Joan.): and again this may
be hindered if we persevere not in asking for it. Wherefore
Basil says (De Constit. Monast. i): The reason why sometimes thou
hast asked and not received, is because thou hast asked amiss, either
inconsistently, or lightly, or because thou hast asked for what was not
good for thee, or because thou hast ceased asking.20

20 ST II-II, q. 83, a. 15, ad 2. He adds, “Since, however, a man cannot

condignly merit eternal life for another, as stated above (I-II, q. 114, a. 6), it
follows that sometimes one cannot condignly merit for another things that
pertain to eternal life. For this reason we are not always heard when we pray for
others, as stated above (a. 7, ad 2, 3). Hence it is that four conditions are laid
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 OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

Thus, if some prayers do not obtain specifically what we ask,

this must not be a fault on the part of God, but on our part, “for
we do not know how to pray as we ought” (Rom. 8:26). Even
when what we ask for appears to us as a great good (health, unity
of a family, to keep or obtain a job, to be able to support
ourselves...) these are not always the most urgent goods. Thus,
prayer should be totally confident because: firstly, it always
obtains, as a principal fruit, merit for eternal life; secondly, it is
always for our good, and God grants us also temporal things for
which we ask, although not necessarily in the instant that we ask
but rather at his due time (and God’s time does not always
coincide with that of men); thirdly, when what we ask for is not
what is best for us, God grants us through this prayer other
goods that we are truly lacking.

down; namely to ask – for ourselves – things necessary for salvation – piously –
perseveringly; when all these four concur, we always obtain what we ask for.”
36
6.

Why trust in God?

We are to trust in God because God is good.

We are to trust because he is very good, infinitely good. He is

goodness by essence and, as such, fully diffuses goodness.

We are to trust in God because he is our Father. And a true

father denies nothing to his children. Jesus calls the
hemorrhaging woman by the beautiful name of “daughter”:
“confide filia fides tua te salvam fecit” (Mt 9:22).

Our confidence is bolstered by the love of God and the

surrender he makes to us of his Son Jesus Christ. In the face of
this we should say, like St. Therese:

O Divine Word! You are the Adored Eagle whom I love and
who alone attracts me! Coming into this land of exile, You
willed to suffer and to die in order to draw souls to the bosom
of the Eternal Fire of the Blessed Trinity. Ascending once
again to the Inaccessible Light, henceforth Your abode, You
37
 OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

remain still in this ‘valley of tears,’ hidden beneath the

appearances of a white host. Eternal Eagle, You desire to
nourish me with Your divine substance and yet I am but a
poor little thing who would return to nothingness if Your
divine glance did not give me life from one moment to the
next.
O Jesus, allow me in my boundless gratitude to say to You
that Your love reaches unto folly. In the presence of this
folly, how can You not desire my heart to leap toward You?
How can my confidence, then, have any limits?21
The foundation of this trusting attitude before God is faith
in his paternity and Divine Providence. God directs all things
and directs them for the good of men. We can be sure of these
fundamental truths:

1. God is our Father (cf. Ga 4:6; Rm 8:14) and he loves us

with the same love with which he loves his Son Jesus Christ (cf.
Jn 15:9).

2. God would not permit any evil if it were not to bring

about from it a greater good: “all things work for good for those
who love God” (Rm 8:28).

3. No adversity can exceed our strength because God is

with us by means of his grace (cf. Rm 8:35-39).

4. Since God is on our side, we can do all things (that are

ordered and good), even rise from prostration and from sin: “If
God is for us, who [and we can say also “what”] can be against

21 St Therese of Lisieux. Story of a Soul. Manuscript B. c. IX. 1896. trans.

John Clarke, OCD. 3rd ed. (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1996), 199.
38
 WHY TRUST IN GOD?

us?” (Rm 8:31). “I have the strength for everything through him
who empowers me” (Ph 4:13).

We must make a very important clarification in this respect:

Sacred Scripture condemns foolish confidence because it implies
a conviction that goes against reason. (Je 17:5-6: “Cursed is the
man who trusts in human beings, who seeks his strength in the
flesh, whose heart turns away from the Lord. He is like a barren
bush in the desert that enjoys no change of season, but stands in
a lava waste, a salt and empty earth.”) Foolish confidence judges
that the human efforts of this or that person are sufficient to fix a
situation when this is not the case. We must have confidence but
not be stupid. We know that human efforts are incapable by
themselves of any supernatural act, and consequently man cannot
save himself, nor can he save others (I refer to eternal salvation),
nor by himself persevere in the life of grace until the end of his
days. We also know that the person beset by vice will leave it only
with difficulty, and that someone who is superficial, informal, and
a charlatan will not fulfill his promises. . . . If I trust in that which
my reason, perfected by prudence and illumined by faith, tells me
not to hope in, this would be foolish.

But this does not rule out the possibility of doing two things
that make for a trust that is wise rather than foolish. The first is
trusting in the work of divine grace, to which there is no obstacle
in the human heart that can halt its impetus: “Like a stream is the
king’s heart in the hand of the Lord; wherever it pleases him, he
39
 OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

directs it” (Pv 21:1). The second is trusting in the transforming

power of trust itself. This can be exemplified with a real case.
The great Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky was a compulsive
gambler who squandered his goods on cards and roulette. When
he was left with nothing, he asked his wife for the last money that
belonged to her, part of a small inheritance, by lying to her about
a very important investment for which he needed the money. She
didn’t believe him, but without telling him that she knew he
would gamble with it, gave him the money as if she trusted in the
sincerity of her spouse, who, of course, gambled with the money and
lost it. But the shame of having betrayed the trust of his wife was
so great that it was enough to cure him of his addiction to
gambling. She did not trust in the promise of her husband, or
better said, in the capacity of this man addicted to gambling to
fulfill what he said, but she acted as if she trusted, trusting in the
power of trust that was shown to him who didn’t deserve it. And
effectively, his seeing himself to be the object of undeserved trust
and the pain of having abused this trust did what other remedies
could not. This is possible because the expression of “apparent
trust” is in reality an expression of “true love.” I act as though I
trust someone because I love that person, and I risk being
betrayed because perhaps this pain to which I expose myself can
change him.

This mode of trust (or to trust someone as if there were trust)

is one of the most powerful educational resources (Kentenich

40
 WHY TRUST IN GOD?

spoke of this when he referred to what is called “the pedagogy of

trust,” which is based on the confidence that there is still much
that is noble in human nature, despite the wounds of original and
personal sin), and we are accustomed to refer to it when we say
that in order to educate the responsibility of others we must dare
to trust (parents must trust in their children, teachers in their
students, formators in those they form...). Undoubtedly this
attitude will make us vulnerable, and many times we will lose
what we have entrusted to others, just like the faithful spouse of
the Russian author lost her money, but if we are disposed to lose
certain material goods, perhaps we can achieve great things in the
souls of those we are educating.

41
OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

42
7.

Distrust and other Vices

Contrary to this Virtue

There are various vices opposed to trust.

1) Distrust
Often, without knowing how or why, we become distrustful,
or at least, it costs us to trust. This affects our relationship with
God and others, including our parents, companions, and
superiors.

Distrust is a lack of faith in the other person. Distrust has

many forms; it could present itself as trepidation and suspicion,
scruples, apprehension and prejudice against something or
someone, incredulity and skepticism, fear, reserve, doubt, or
preoccupation.

The distrustful person could have a suspicious nature, always

be thinking badly of others, or simply be someone who doesn’t

43
 OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

hope for anything from others, or even one who is inclined to

suppose that other people desert him, abandon him, or are not
interested in him.

Because of this, distrust makes us become isolated and solitary.

It costs the distrustful person dearly to establish filial bonds,
friendships, and bonds of paternity and spousal love. It is
difficult for him to open his soul, fall in love, and let himself be
helped and guided.

Distrust causes a great deal of harm; it checks the course of

spiritual life and makes us orphans in our hearts.

This distrust can be a very grave sin when it is a lack of

confidence in the supernatural help of God; in such a case, it
would be a sin against the virtue of hope.

Many times, spiritual work begins by thawing our distrust.

2) Misplaced trust
Another vice is worldly trust or excessive trust in ourselves, that is
to say, in our own strength, lights or experience. This is not trust
but presumption. At times we think it is not difficult to trust in
God, but what is really happening is that it costs us to quit
trusting in ourselves. We have become accustomed to getting
what we need through our own efforts or our goods: money,
talent, intelligence, beauty, strength... Hoping for something from
others, without any support from ourselves, in the end can seem
something strange to us. This is a problem that notably affects

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 DISTRUST AND OTHER VICES CONTRARY TO THIS VIRTUE

the proud; and so it is less difficult for the humble person to trust.
The greater and more profound one’s humility is, the easier it is to
trust. In this sense we should say that there is a good mistrust: that
is the mistrust in our efforts compared to God’s. It is absolutely
necessary – and I am even referring to a psychological necessity – to
possess a healthy attitude of neediness; we should feel and not be
afraid to recognize ourselves as beings needful of others and
especially needful of God. The ideal of a “strong and virile man”
cannot and must not be confused with man as self-sufficient. A
virile spirituality is not opposed to a spirituality in which one is
always a “son,” and “a son that needs” and “depends” on God.
“Real men don’t cry” is false; the God-man wept (cf. Lk. 19:41).
Confusing true virility and solidity with their deformations can
produce serious disturbances. On a retreat in 1937, Fr. Kentenich,
referring to certain deviations in this sense that were diffusing
throughout the national-socialist Germany of his time said, “In
Germany one talks a great deal about ‘masculine piety.’ The way it
is used is very dangerous, for the ‘masculinity’ referred to is often
violent and unenlightened. Let me be blunt: Whoever fails to
educate the child in the man, leaves him vulnerable to unhealthy
sexual tendencies. The many sexual deviations in our circles – do
not take this lightly, for I speak here as scholar who wants to be
taken literally – the terrible sexual sins and failings which have
afflicted members of religious orders are, in my opinion, to be
attributed to a lack of education in genuine childlikeness.”22

22 Joseph Kentenich, Childlikeness Before God: Reflections on Spiritual Childhood

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 OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

To him who trusts in himself the words of Jeremiah that we

have already cited above can be applied in a perfect manner:
“Cursed is the man who trusts in human beings!” This is the
image of the world today, so confident in itself, in its wisdom, in
its strength, and in its inventions that rather than making it happy,
inspire the fear of self-destruction.

3) Fear of our miseries

Our trust is also impeded by looking wrongly at our miseries. As if
by being poor sinners with pasts shadowed in failures, clumsy in
spiritual things... we could limit God. Explicitly confronting this
prejudice, St. Francis de Sales asked himself if a person who has a
profound sense of his misery can walk toward God with
confidence. And the saint responded, “Not only can the soul that
knows its misery have a great confidence in God, but it cannot
have a true confidence unless it has knowledge of its misery; for
this knowledge and confession of our misery introduces us to
God.”23 All of the great saints have begun their prayers with the
confession of their misery and unworthiness, in such a way that
there is nothing better than recognizing oneself to be poor and
unworthy of being in the presence of God. The Socratic phrase
“know yourself” means to say, undoubtedly, know your dignity,
your nobility, so as not to degrade and diminish yourself; but it

(Waukesha, Wisconsin: Schoenstatt Fathers, 2001), 38.

This was written in 1937!
23 St. Francis de Sales, The Consoling Thoughts of St. Francis de Sales, ed. Père

Huguet (Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son, 1877), 35, book I, ch. iii.
46
 DISTRUST AND OTHER VICES CONTRARY TO THIS VIRTUE

also means to say: know your imperfection and your misery.

Precisely the more miserable we are, the more we ought to trust in
the goodness and mercy of God.

The admirable St. Therese of the Child Jesus writes: “I feel

that if You found a soul weaker and littler than mine, which is
impossible, You would be pleased to grant it still greater favors,
provided it abandoned itself with total confidence to Your Infinite
Majesty.”24

4) Confused trust
Finally, confusing trust with a feeling, when in reality it is an act of
the will, destroys our trust. In this sense, these words of St.
Francis de Sales are highly enriching:

And if we do not feel this confidence, we must not omit to

make acts of it, and to say to our Lord: Although, O Lord, I
have no feeling of confidence in Thee, yet I know that Thou
art my God, that I am all Thine, and have no hope but in Thy
goodness; therefore I abandon myself entirely into Thy hands.
It is always in our power to make these acts; and though there
may be difficulty, yet there is no impossibility; and it is on
these occasions, and amidst these difficulties that we are to
show our fidelity to our Lord; for though we may make these
acts without any pleasure or satisfaction, we must not be
disturbed at it, since our Lord likes them better so. And do
not say that you speak the words only with the mouth; for if
the heart were not willing, the mouth would not speak a
word. Having done this, remain in peace; and without paying

24 St. Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, Manuscript B, c. IX, 200.

47
 OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

any attention to your trouble, speak to our Lord of other

things.25

25 St. Francis de Sales, “Conference II: Confidence,” in The True Spiritual

Conferences (London: Richardson and Son, 1862), 23.

48
8.

The Most Perfect Act of Trust:

Abandonment

Por From what we have just finished saying follows that which
from the supernatural perspective is totally logical: abandoning
ourselves into the divine hands. St. Peter has written, “Cast all
your worries upon [the Lord] because he cares for you” (1 Pe 5:7),
and St. Paul says, “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by
prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known
to God” (Ph 4:6). This abandonment is the most perfect act of
trust in God.

What does it mean? Theology distinguishes two aspects in the

will of God which it calls “signified will” and “will of good
pleasure.”

Signified or expressed will is that which God has expressed in his

law, be it natural or revealed (for example the Ten
Commandments, other precepts revealed in Sacred Scripture, or

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 OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

what is commanded through the Magisterium of the Church as

definitive and obligatory). Signified will also includes the
Evangelical Counsels, although in the manner of counsels and not
mandatory for all. I already know what God counsels us to do by
means of Jesus Christ: to walk the path of poverty, of chastity and
of obedience. It also includes the inspirations of grace through
which he illumines or moves us to act in one way or another.
Man is to respond to this will with obedience.

In contrast, the will of good pleasure is the divine will that has not
been revealed in advance. For example, I disregard what God will
want of me in the future: if he wants to send me an illness, if I will
have a long or short life, how I will die, if I will be poor or rich, if
I will get such a job or not, if they will offer me this or that
apostolate... in short, what each day God is ordaining for us. Man
is to respond to this will with conformity, that is to say, with
submissive and humble acceptance.

“To conform” means to adjust, to reconcile one thing with

another; also to bring a person into agreement with another; to be
of the same view and opinion; and finally, to diminish oneself, to
voluntarily subject oneself to do or suffer something toward
which one feels some repugnance.

This conformity, which some authors call “abandonment in

the hands of God,” admits degrees. The lowest degree we could
call “tolerance and patience”: it is that which neither loves nor
desires something that disgusts one or causes one pain or hurt
(one’s own illness, the loss of loved ones, the contradictions of

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 THE MOST PERFECT ACT OF TRUST: ABANDONMENT

life, failures) and tries to avoid them in the measure possible, but
never by means of some action that implies a sin. If the only
means of avoiding something that repulses the sensibility is to
commit a venial sin, one would prefer to endure the hard time.
This degree is necessary for salvation, because it is never licit to
sin to avoid any evil.

The second degree we call “good will and promptitude in the

face of suffering,” and it consists in the attitude of him who,
although he doesn’t desire the evils that befall him, nor does he
choose them, nevertheless, after they come he accepts them
willingly because they are the will and good pleasure of God. It
also implies the desire to suffer what God sends if this be more
pleasing to God.

The last degree is that of him who not only accepts and
willingly suffers the pains and works that God sends, but also
desires them and rejoices much in them, because that is the will of
God. This has been called “holy abandon” in the divine hands.

Abandon in the hands of God, in whichever of these three

degrees, is to be practiced in all those things that surpass our will
and free decision. That is to say, in that which does not depend
on us:

— in external goods and evils that providence ordains or

permits to befall us (prosperity and adversity, calamities,
riches or poverty),

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 OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

— in good and bad things that affect our body and our spirit
(health and sickness, consequences of sicknesses, life or
death, tranquility or anxiety),

— in things that concern our fame (humiliations, praises, a

good reputation or the loss of it) and even in our successes
or failures in life, etc.

Abandoning oneself in the hands of God gives serenity,

freedom, and interior peace.

Abandonment is the most perfect act of trust because a person

can only abandon himself, “leave himself” in the hands of
another, when he trusts fully in the hands in which he is
surrendering himself.

52
9.

Spiritual Childhood

We have already said that trust implies making ourselves like

children. This is the essence of the spirituality called “spiritual
childhood,” whose most celebrated interpreter has been St.
Therese of the Child Jesus. Spiritual childhood is, undoubtedly,
the proper realm of the continual exercise of trust in God.

However, there have been many misunderstandings in respect

to this attitude of soul, perhaps because of a handling of these
ideas without taking into account the true texts of the saint. We
will try to give a correct profile of these texts.

1) What is spiritual childhood?

Spiritual childhood is spiritual infancy, but it is not infantilism
or weakness and least of all caprice. It must not be
misinterpreted; if it is called by some saints the “little way” (“way

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 OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

of spiritual childhood”) “it is because it isn’t complicated, but it is

a mistake to say it is an easy path.”26

It involves, above all, the recognition of our own nothingness.

To remain a child, says St. Therese:

is to recognize our nothingness, to expect everything from

God as a little child expects everything from its father; it is to
be disquieted about nothing. . . . To be little is not attributing
to oneself the virtues that one practices, believing oneself
capable of anything, but to recognize that God places this
treasure in the hands of His little child to be used when
necessary; but it remains always God’s treasure.27
Remaining a child involves maintaining a spirit of poverty; to
be poor is the most priceless treasure because one has
compassion and mercy on a child because of his poverty of
strength. And so she frequently repeats: “In the case of children,
they will be judged with extreme sweetness”28; “Little children are
not damned”29; “Even among the poor, they give the child what is
necessary, but as soon as he grows up, his father no longer wants
to feed him.”30

26 Kentenich, Joseph, Niños ante Dios, Córdoba (2005), 67. He adds: “They
do not say that it regards a little way in the sense that it is an easy way. No; it is
not easy. Try it; it is terribly difficult. It is a way that requires the greatest and
total abnegation” (68). Editorial translation.
Kentenich, Childlikeness Before God.
27 St. Therese of the Child Jesus, Last Conversations, August 6. trans. John

Clarke, OCD. ICS Publications, Washington DC 1977. p. 138-139.

28 Last Conversations, Appendix II, n. 41. Editorial translation
29 Idem. Last Conversations, July 10, p. 84.
30 Idem. Last Conversations, August 6, p. 139.

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 SPIRITUAL CHILDHOOD

The greatest enemy of this spiritual childhood is to abandon

our poverty due to attachment to earthly goods, that is, due to the
loss of what St. Ignatius calls “indifference.”

Spiritual childhood implies a total detachment, even of all that

could be called “extraordinary”:

“I don’t have any desire to see God here on earth. And yet I
love Him! I also love the Blessed Virgin very much, and the
saints, and I don’t desire to see them. [I prefer to live by
faith].”31
It consists in loving and wanting to suffer for God.

Sanctity does not consist in saying beautiful things, it does

not even consist in thinking them, in feeling them! It consists
in suffering and suffering everything.”32
It was far from bringing me any consolations since the most
absolute aridity and almost total abandonment were my lot.
Jesus was sleeping as usual in my little boat; ah! I see very well
how rarely souls allow Him to sleep peacefully within them.
Jesus is so fatigued with always having to take the initiative and
to attend to others that He hastens to take advantage of the
repose I offer to Him. He will undoubtedly awaken before my
great eternal retreat, but instead of being troubled about it this
only gives me extreme pleasure.33
This childlike abandon to God does not imply passivity but
rather completely the opposite, a great strength to practice a
stripping of self and to not place obstacles to the action of God.
It should not seem strange to us, because of this, that Sr.

31 Idem. Last Conversations, September 11, p.188.

32 Idem. Letters of St. Therese of Lisieux. Vol. 1. Letter to Celine. 26 April 1889. p.
557-558.
33 Idem. Story of a Soul. Manuscript “A,” c. VII, p 165.

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 OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TRUST

Genevieve of the Holy Face – her sister Celine – gave evidence in

the process of beatification that the characteristic virtue of the
saint was fortitude. Thus, from the outside, she harnessed the
temperament of this great saint not as a “sweet child” but as a
“strong woman.”

2) The practice of spiritual childhood

How do we put this doctrine into practice according to the
saint herself? I will indicate three aspects.

(a) Exclusion from the extraordinary

Stemming from the conviction of one’s condition as a child

and moreover, as weak, this excludes in the first place all that has
an extraordinary character, that is to say, all that demands a waste
of strength because it is beyond the line of ordinary obligation.
Therese recognizes having been attracted in her childhood by the
idea of great heroes, but it was Jesus Christ himself who, when
the moment arrived, corrected such aspirations, marking out her
true route: “God made me feel that true glory is that which will
last eternally, and to reach it, it isn’t necessary to perform striking
works but to hide oneself and practice virtue in such a way that
the left hand knows not what the right is doing.”34 From that
moment, she will not try to emulate the ostentatious actions of
the saints, but she will take refuge in the ordinary actions within

34 Idem. Story of a Soul. Manuscript “A”, c. 1v, p 72.

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reach of all small souls. Her renunciation of extraordinary

mortifications doesn’t suppose in any way a subterfuge to avoid
mortification; nothing could be farther from her generosity. On
the contrary, Therese in fact endured physical sufferings, like
extreme cold, more difficult than some extraordinary
mortifications.

The heroism that St. Therese teaches is proper to a small child

without strength. She has the conviction that she will not be able
to confront heroism, but by her confidence she assures that God
will sustain her and that divine grace hidden in her will be the
authentic hero. This ascesis of smallness is certainly a mystical
ascesis, that is, an ascesis that is limited to being in cooperation
with the sovereign action of God.

(b) Fidelity to charity and the duties of state

In the second place, this spirituality interprets as fundamental

the most faithful fulfillment of the duties of religious life, the
observance of laws, obedience to the orders of the Superiors, the
practice of fraternal charity, all of the duties of state, and the
suffering that providential happenings impose. Thus St. Therese
makes use of the most minute details to practice this spirituality:

Far from resembling beautiful souls who practiced every

kind of mortification from their childhood, I had no attraction
for this. . . . My mortifications consisted in breaking my will,
always so ready to impose itself on others, in holding back a

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reply, in rendering little services without any recognition, in

not leaning my back against a support when seated, etc., etc.”35
I have no other means of proving my love for you other
than that of strewing flowers, that is, not allowing one little
sacrifice to escape, not one look, one word, profiting by all the
smallest things and doing them through love. I desire to suffer
for love and even to rejoice through love; and in this way I
shall strew flowers before Your throne. I shall not come upon
one without unpetalling it for You.36
In particular she practiced something that cost her greatly,
owing to her particular affective temperament: mortification of
the heart. In the manuscript directed to her blood sister and
superior she says:

I remember when I was still a postulant that I had such violent

temptations to satisfy myself and to find a few crumbs of
pleasure that I was obliged to walk rapidly by your door and to
cling firmly to the banister of the staircase in order not to turn
back. There came into my mind a crowd of permissions to
seek; in a word, dear Mother, I found a thousand reasons for
pleasing my nature. How happy I am now for having deprived
myself from the very beginning of my religious life!37
Her favored practice is fraternal charity. St. Therese of the
Child Jesus maintained the principle that one must reach the limit
of one’s efforts before complaining. How many times she went
to matins with dizziness or strong headaches! “I can still walk,”
she said, “and so I should finish my duty.” And thanks to this
energy she accomplished heroic acts with simplicity.

35 Idem. Story of a Soul. Manuscript “A,” c. VI, p 143.

36 Idem. Story of a Soul. Manuscript “B,” c. IX, p 196.
37 Idem. Story of a Soul. Manuscript “C,” c. XI, p. 237.

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(c) Heroic and happy ascesis

Finally, we must point out the way in which she suffered. The
heroic way to suffer is to do it with joy: “...when they insult you and
persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you because of
me. Rejoice and be glad” (Mt. 5: 11-12).

In the midst of the most terrible passive purification that

manifested itself in great temptations against faith (so great that
the saint did not dare to describe them for fear of blaspheming, as
would happen later to Mother Teresa of Calcutta38), she writes:

Also, in spite of this trial which has taken away all my joy, I
can nevertheless cry out: ‘You have given me delight, O Lord,
in all your doings.’ For is there a joy greater than that of
suffering out of love for You? The more interior the suffering
is and the less apparent to the eyes of creatures, the more it
rejoices You, O my God! But if my suffering was really
unknown to You, which is impossible, I would still be happy
to have it, if through it I could prevent or make reparation for
one single sin against faith.39
The strength to put on a happy face when in pain has been the
most evident proof of the plenitude of her love. It is a
characteristic of her mystical ascesis. Because of this, if she
suffered and was immolated the saint wanted, if it were possible,
that God take no notice of it, so that His heart would not suffer
because of it.

38 “In my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of

God not being God, of God not really existing (Jesus, please forgive my
blasphemies, I have been told to write everything).”(Mother Teresa, Come, Be My
Light. ed. Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C. [Double Day: New York, 2007], 192-193)
39 St. Therese of the Child Jesus, Story of a Soul. Manuscript “C,” c. IX, p

214.
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If she sweat in times of great heat, or if she suffered greatly

from the intense cold of winter, she had the exquisite idea of
not wiping off her forehead or of not rubbing her hands
except on the sly, as if not to give God time to realize what she
was doing. The saint made the effort to smile during her
mortifications, so that God, fooled by the expression of her
hand, “would not know what she suffered.40
Above all, the saint sang to deceive, if it were possible, God
himself (an intention really proper to a child):

“While I am strewing my flowers, I shall sing [...] I shall sing

even when I must gather my flowers in the midst of thorns, and
my song will be all the more melodious in proportion to the
length and sharpness of the thorns.”41

Years later, a great admirer of the saint of Lisieux, Bl. Mother

Teresa of Calcutta, will make this aspect of holiness her own as
well: a smile that hides pain from everyone, even, if it were
possible, from God himself:

“My resolution . . . to smile at God.”42

“My second resolution is to become an apostle of joy – to

console the Sacred Heart of Jesus through joy. Please ask Our
Lady to give me her heart – so that I may with greater ease fulfill
His desire in me. I want to smile even at Jesus and so hide if
possible the pain and darkness of my soul even from Him.”43

40 Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Esprit.

41 Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Story of a Soul. Manuscript “B,” c. IX, p
196-197.
42 Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light, 166.
43 Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light, 171.

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“If you only knew what goes on within my heart. Sometimes

the pain is so great that I feel as if everything will break. The
smile is a big cloak which covers a multitude of pains.”44

3) Teaching spiritual childhood

The principal problem in living this spiritual childhood is that
one must be educated, and there are very few who are capable of teaching
this way. What is lacking so that someone may develop a true
spiritual childhood, and thus, the virtue of trust? Fathers and
mothers! And this is precisely what is difficult to find!

What causes this lack, this undeveloped childlikeness?

Philosophers and the psychologists remind us that
childlikeness is relational. Its development hinges on the
relationship with a You, a fatherly or motherly You. That is
the great longing of humanity today, because there are so
desperately few fathers and mothers.45
There are so few children because there are so few fathers
and mothers. There are many frustrated children, but few true
children; few trusting men and women because they lack fathers
and mothers that are fathers and mothers as they should be, as
much in the biological order as is in the spiritual. There are
progenitors, but are they fathers and mothers? There are
superiors and directors, but are they fathers and mothers?

44 Mother Teresa, Come Be My Light, 176.

45 Kentenich, Childlikeness Before God, 39.
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Is this not, perhaps, the reason why the immense majority of

Christians – not even to mention non-Christians – lack an
authentic sense of divine paternity?

Trust is a most delicate flower that naturally grows under the

sun of authentic paternity and maternity; and this applies for
biological paternity and maternity as much as for spiritual
paternity and maternity (that of religious superiors, teachers,
educators, spiritual directors, confessors...).

This is the true problem regarding the absence of trust in so

many hearts: they have been frustrated by the very people who
should have engendered it. (I have already said that first is born
trust, and that distrust only arises form unlearning spontaneous
trust!)

We are missing fathers and mothers of body and soul. And

by saying fathers and mothers that generate security and trust, I
do not mean to say that paternity and maternity must only be
exercised with mildness; the contrary of paternity is not only
harshness and abandonment, but also weakness and disinterest
toward the children. A father is not only tender, like when he
caresses; he also causes pain when he removes thorns or
straightens what is crooked. But he caresses because he loves and
he corrects because he loves, and he does this while loving and
letting show that he loves. This topic is very important, but
regrettably it would carry us off to other considerations.46

46 I have dealt a little with this theme in: Crisis de Paternidad. El padre ausente,

Virtus/7, San Rafael (2008).

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10.

Trust and the Sacred Heart of

Jesus

Christian spirituality has connected the virtue of trust in a

particular way with the Heart of Jesus and devotion to Divine
Mercy, which coincide substantially.

It shouldn’t surprise us that the devotion to the Sacred Heart

of Christ is a devotion because of his hypostatically assumed
human nature. By showing us his heart, Jesus shows us that he
has assumed our reality: he has human sentiments, a human will
and human understanding; he knows what it is to love, what it is
to pilgrimage, what it is to see things with human eyes. He
knows, above all, what it is to suffer. He has experienced our
limitations, our difficulties, and our pains. Everything humiliating
and painful, as long as it does not involve sin, has been known by
Jesus through his own experience. He has been “tested in every
way” so that he can sympathize with us (Hb 4:15).

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Moreover, the heart that he shows me is wounded: wounded

by love, for only love explains that he should be made man and
handed over to death. “The Son of God who has loved me and
given himself up for me” (Ga 2:20). And wounded by pain,
because it is a heart pierced by a lance and injured by ingratitude,
betrayals, and sacrileges. . . .

Because of this I trust in him. How could he not understand

what is happening to me, if he has had worse things happen to
him? How could he be estranged from my anguish, if he desired
to feel anguish and weep in order to understand me? How could
my complaints of weakness and impotence seem strange to him, if
he knows even better than I do what fatigue is, and the physically
exhausting road to Calvary, and what it means to need someone
to carry your own cross so as not to die on the way? How could
my necessity for consolation seem strange to him, if in the garden
he had to be consoled by an angel? Looking at his heart I feel
understood and comforted; I interiorly hear his promises of help
and his words of encouragement, and I cannot doubt his offer of
infinite mercy.

Prostrate at your feet, humbly,

I come to beg you, My Sweet Jesus,

that I may be able to repeat to you continually,

Sacred Heart, I trust in you!

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If trust is a proof of tenderness,

I yearn to give you this proof of love,

even when I am plunged in bitterness,

Sacred Heart, I trust in you!

In the saddest hours of my life,

when all leave me, Oh, my Jesus!

and my soul is combated with pains,

Sacred Heart, I trust in you!

Although I may feel distrust coming,

and although all turn away from me,

my hope will not be confounded,

Sacred Heart, I trust in you!

If I enter into a holy covenant with you,

and give you all my love and my will,

how could my hope be frustrated?

Sacred Heart, I trust in you!

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And I feel such confidence,

that without fear of anything, my Jesus,

I hope to repeat until death:

Sacred Heart, I trust in you!

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11.

Fruits of Trust

I wish that we all might be able to say like St. Therese,

speaking of the effects the advice of Fr. Prou produced in her,
“He launched me full sail on the tide of confidence and love
which attracted me so much, but upon which I had not dared to
venture.”47

“Trust in God”, writes the venerable Fr. Sopocko, “drives

away all sadness and depression, and fills the soul with great joy,
even when circumstances are at their worst.

“Trust makes the miracles because it has God’s almightiness to

its service.

Trust gives us inner peace, such as the world cannot give.

Trust opens the way to all the virtues. . . .

47 St. Thérèse of Lisieux, compiled by Patricia Treece, Mornings with Saint

Thérèse (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2015), 60.

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“Above all, trust comforts the dying, who, in their last

moments, remember all the sins of their lives, and are sometimes
driven to despair. Appropriate acts of trust should, then, be
suggested to the dying, for it is not everyone who, at such a time,
can make them for himself. The dying should be reminded of
their true home, now no longer distant, where the King of Mercy
joyfully awaits all who trust in His Mercy. Trust assures us of a
reward after death, as we know from many examples in the lives
of the Saints. We need only to think of Dismas, the thief dying on
the cross beside Our Lord, to whom, in his last moments, he
turned with trust, to hear the blessed assurance: ‘This day thou
shalt be with me in Paradise.’”48

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose hope is in

the Lord. He is like a tree planted beside the waters that stretches
out its roots to the stream: it fears not the heat when it comes, its
leaves stay green; in the year of drought it shows no distress, but
still bears fruit” (Je 17:7-8).

* * *

48 Sopocko, The Mercy of God in His Works, 189-200.

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“Holy Spirit, give me the grace of unwavering trust when I

think of Our Lord’s merits, and of fearful trust when I think of
my own weakness.

When poverty comes knocking at my door: Jesus, I trust in You.

When sickness lays me low, or injury cripples me: Jesus, I trust

in You.

When the world pushes me aside, and pursues me with its

hatred: Jesus, I trust in You.

When I am besmirched by calumny, and pierced through by

bitterness: Jesus, I trust in You.

When my friends abandon me, and wound me by word and

deed: Jesus, I trust in You.

Spirit of love and Mercy, be to me a refuge, a sweet

consolation, a blessed hope, that in all the most trying
circumstances of my life I may never cease to trust You.”49

49 Sopocko, The Mercy of God in His Works, 200.

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