The Difficulty with Trust

Reflection for the Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time by Fr. Earl Valdez

Claude Monet, Road at La Cavée, Pourville | Photo from Wikimedia Commons

I would like to think that the most difficult thing to do in one’s life is to trust somebody, to hand over the important things to the will and decision of another person. I think it means leaving a part of your life and how it will go to someone else whom you believe would take care of it well. It is not hinged on any proof of certainty or assurance, and whatever makes us say that somebody is trustworthy or not is only based on our experience of trusting that person. Otherwise, we are left to beliefs or impressions. 

Thus, trusting is, in a way, similar to a blind gamble, as the philosopher Blaise Pascal says. In reality, we have equal chances of “winning,” that is, getting it right when we entrust something to somebody. And yet, to place our chances on the Lord would make more sense than not doing so, because, according to this great mathematician and philosopher, it’s better to have that expectation of a gain than not have anything at all. That may not apply to many things in life; however, when it comes to entrusting our lives to the Lord and the promise of infinite reward (which is, in fact, a lot!), we still come out “winning the game,” so to speak. 

Perhaps it is this kind of all-or-nothing trust that the Lord calls us to have in today’s Gospel. When we look at our lives, we are confronted not just with what we have, but also with what we desire and hope for, which comes with what we fear and worry about. At the same time, we are also confronted with the difficulty of facing uncertainty over these things. One day we may have them, but a whole tragedy can take away everything. One day we learn to live with barely anything, but the next we end up craving for things we didn’t even want in the first place. Yet, in the midst of the change of things and even our own disposition toward realities that we live in, the Lord calls us to entrust everything to the Father who knows what we truly need and life in gives it in the way that is fitting for us, not according to what we want, but according to be truly what we are, that is, what He truly desires us to be. 

St. Ignatius of Loyola, symbolically offering his life to the Lord in the form of his sword | Photo from Thinking Faith

This is what the Lord means when He says that the Father in heaven truly knows what we need, in the way that He provides for those who do not even have the capacity to task, like the animals or plants do. But do we actually trust this? Or do we still hold on to the bit of certainties that we have especially when it comes to our relationships and our values, to our possessions and hopes, to the life that we have now and to the life that we hope we have? 

This Sunday, we hope that we could ponder on this question, particularly for us who, in one way or another, confront the uncertainty that we have. Are there areas in our lives that we are called to hold on less and leave more to the Lord? Would there still be things that we have a tight control on, and yet we are called to leave it to the Lord’s grace and its movement in our lives?  

We ask, therefore, for the grace to have a kind of trust that grows and leads us closer to the Lord, with knowledge that there might be things that are out of control, but the Lord takes care of them in the best way possible. Trust indeed is the most difficult, and yet in deciding to do so, we come to know more intimately the Lord who knows our lives better than we do.