Casting all our anxieties on the Father

“… One way of applying this faith in God is when we are worried about something that makes us anxious. Sometimes it is fear for the future, or concerns about our health, we are frightened about suspected dangers, we are worried about our relatives, apprehensive about a job we have to do, we are uncertain about how to behave, there is the shock of bad news. There are fears of various kinds.

Well then, at times like these, precisely in times when everything is uncertain, God wants us to believe in his love and asks of us an act of trust. If we are really Christians, he wants us to make good use of these painful situations to prove to him that we do believe in his love. This means believing that he is a Father to us and he thinks of us, and casting upon him every anxiety we have, burdening him with them. Scripture says: “Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.” (1 Pt 5:7). …

The fact is that God is our Father and he wants his children’s happiness. This is why they unload every burden onto him. Besides, God is love and he wants his children to be love.

All these worries, anxieties, and fears block our soul, shutting it up in itself, and get in the way of our opening up towards God by doing his will and towards our neighbours by making ourselves one with them so as to love them in the right way.

In the early times of the Focolare, when the Holy Spirit was teaching us our first steps on the path of love, “casting all our anxiety on the Father” was something we did every day, and often several times a day.

In fact we were leaving behind a purely human way of living, even though we were Christians, so as to move into a supernatural, divine way of living. That is, we were beginning to love.

Worries are stumbling blocks to love. So the Holy Spirit had to teach us how to get rid of them.

And he did. I remember we used to say that just as you cannot hold a hot coal in your hand, but you would drop it at once so as not to get burned, so too with the same speed we had to cast every worry onto the Father. I can’t remember any worry cast into the Father’s heart which he did not take care of. …

So let’s cast every anxiety on him. We will then be free to love. We’ll run faster on the path of love which, as we know, leads to holiness.”

C.Lubich, Cercando le cose di lassù, Roma 1992⁴, p. 26-29.

Read the whole text:  Chiara Lubich Center