What? Me Worry?
Memorial of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Priest, and Doctor of the Church
My dear encountered couples:
We all worry. If we don’t, then we are quite different from most people. Even the disciples of Jesus worried. He was asleep in their boat. A storm was taking place. Water was coming into the boat and the disciples were afraid they were going to drown. When they awoke Jesus, he quieted the storm and asked, “Why are you so terrified? Why are you lacking in faith?”
Wouldn’t it be great to have such great faith that nothing bothers us! But it seems to me that there was at least one time when Jesus himself was worried. In the garden of Gethsemane on that first Holy Thursday night we are told that Jesus was so troubled over what was going to happen to him that he not only broke out with perspiration but that “his sweat became like drops of blood.”
I think most of us, as long as we are in this world, are going to worry. Even those with great faith are going to have a few days when we feel alone and threatened, when we wonder where God is. And, like Jesus in the Garden, like Jesus on the cross, we are going to feel abandoned. We are not only going to worry, but we are going to experience great fear.
Those are normal occasions which come to everyone and test our faith. Those are occasions when we are given the choice to do something about what we are afraid of, or collapse. The best advice is to first turn to God, like the disciples turned to Jesus, and ask for help. Then, believing that you are given some of his strength and courage, start doing something else to solve the problem.
If it is a problem that has no solution, we must then place our lives completely in the hands of God and do something else to occupy our minds. Not easy, but that’s life. That’s part of what goes into the making of a saint. Worry, fear, a few drops of perspiration plus faith in Jesus equals peace – a little now, a whole lot of it later.
As Alfred E. Newman used to say, “What? Me worry?” But then let us try to trust in Jesus. That’s what makes the difference. Let’s all try it more often, especially when we feel we are sinking.
