HOLY CARELESSNESS

423rd Meditation

“Entrust everything to me and be completely without worry” (Inner Word).

Trust and carelessness go hand in hand when the relationship with our Heavenly Father becomes deeper and deeper. Many things want to weigh us down and worry us, making life difficult for us. But the Lord Himself exhorts us to a holy unconcern: “Be not solicitous for your life, what you shall eat, nor for your body, what you shall put on” (Mt 6:25).

Holy carelessness possesses both the splendor of paradise lost and the taste of the glory that awaits us. It has nothing to do with mere human optimismor even frivolity. True carelessness is founded on the certainty of the Heavenly Father’s love for us, and is our confident response.

Indeed, why should we worry about things as if everything depended on us? This would be a burden that is not ours to carry, and that we would not even be able to bear. The Lord, on the other hand, invites us to take His yoke upon us, assuring us that His burden is light (Mt 11:30).

Perhaps it is not easy for us to have this deep trust in God. Since the loss of Paradise, we find it difficult to regain our original and natural trust, like that of a child in his father.

But this is exactly what our Heavenly Father wants. When we follow His invitation, we surrender the center of our existence to His gracious guidance, instead of relying on our own abilities and efforts.

Our beloved Apostle Paul describes it in these terms:

“Such confidence we have, through Christ, towards God. Not that we are sufficient to think any thing of ourselves, as of ourselves: but our sufficiency is from God. Who also hath made us fit ministers of the new testament” (2 Cor 3:4-6a).

May it be so and may we be ever more aware of it!