Do We Let Jesus Be God?

Patti Armstrong writes of the importance of surrendering to Jesus, accepting even the crosses and turning to Him for help carrying them.

“The Pharisees would not let Jesus be God,” the priest said during his humility one morning, referring to the Gospel reading of the day. John 8: 51-59.

[Jesus said,] "Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever keeps my word will never see death.”
(So) the Jews said to him, “Now we are sure that you are possessed. Abraham died, as did the prophets, yet you say, ‘Whoever keeps my word will never taste death.’ Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? Or the prophets, who died? Who do you make yourself out to be?”
Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is worth nothing; but it is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’You do not know him, but I know him. And if I should say that I do not know him, I would be like you a liar. But I do know him and I keep his word. Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad."
So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old and you have seen Abraham?”
Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.” So they picked up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid and went out of the temple area.

What was wrong with those Pharisees? Despite an abundance of miracles, even raising people from the dead, yet they persisted in their persecution of Jesus—refusing to consider that He could be the Savior.

While watching the Pharisee’s hatred of Jesus during The Passion of the Christ movie, I wished I could have seen the look on their faces after they died and realized that Jesus, whom they persecuted, really was God. Not very Christian of me, I suppose.

But the priest’s homily was not to announce that the Pharisees were bad and we are good. Instead, he asked, do we really let Jesus be God? Because unless we surrender to Jesus, we are not letting Him be God. It means accepting even the crosses and then turning to Jesus for help carrying them.

null

As I meditated on the homily, I thought it’s simply hard to let God be God at all. Suffering can feel like a betrayal because we are God’s friend after all, so why isn’t He cooperating with us?

Years ago I read a reflection on prayer and faith. “If you pray and then worry about God’s response, then you don’t have faith. If you believe that God has every hair on your head counted, you must also trust that he has heard your prayer and will answer in the way that is best for you.”

The Blessed Mother showed us how to cooperate with God and not the other way around. She didn’t complain while going from inn to inn looking for a place to give birth. While looking for Jesus for three days, there was no whining Why me? Mary surrendered and trusted God to be God, regardless of her own comforts and preferences.

Click to tweet:
Unless we surrender to Jesus, we are not letting Him be God. #CatholicMom

I don’t want to be like a Pharisee. I want to let God be God. This beautiful Novena of Surrender by Father Dolindo Routolo, whose cause for canonization has been opened, has been helping me to let go and let God. I love the prayer repeated ten times at the end of each day of prayer: “O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything!”

We do not have to go it alone. Those words help me feel that in my heart.

null