Oh Jesus, I surrender myself to you! You take care of it!

October 23, 2018
St. John of Capistrano

Dear Family of Mary!

“My children, long for holiness but in humility, in the humility which permits my Son to do that which He desires through you…” (October 2, 2018)

I guess that Our Lady understands us pretty well. She knows that if we long for holiness, thinking that we can become holy on our own steam, we will find that only our pride has grown in the effort. Try as we might, we cannot make ourselves holy. Only God can do that. Our part in the work of holiness is to give Him free reign in our lives, and then just keep on giving Him permission to guide us into holiness, day by day.

That is why I love the Surrender Novena that we pray together during the Daily Rosary. Jesus speaks very gently but firmly in that Novena, constantly calling us back to our childlike need for help. Each moment of each day we can turn to Jesus and ask Him to take over, and do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Whether it is a family relationship that needs healing, a domestic task that needs doing, a project at work that overwhelms us, or daily prayer that must be performed but seems to never happen. In every part of our life, we need Jesus to take over. We need to surrender to Him, and let Him guide us through the complications of life.

When we surrender to Jesus, we let go of our own ideas of how to accomplish something. We allow Jesus to “do that which He desires through [us]”. As Our Lady knows, the hardest thing for us is to let go control. But that is exactly what we need to do. Jesus wants to work through us, but only one person can drive the car. We have to let go of the wheel so that Jesus can take over.