“God allows all kinds of difficulties for those who wish to serve Him, but as long as they entrust themselves to Him, He never allows them to succumb under the burden” (St. Francis de Sales).
Anyone who has seriously set out on the path of following Christ will be able to confirm this sentence of St. Francis de Sales. Our Father does not allow us to be tempted beyond our strength (1 Cor 10:13), nor does He allow us to collapse under the weight of the burdens we have to bear on the way to Him.
We will experience this countless times, and it is important that we allow it to penetrate our conscience and our heart so that it becomes an inner certainty. In fact, the certainty that arises from it will actualize our faith in the concrete situation in which we have to carry a certain cross and we are tempted to believe that it is beyond our strength. We must then turn our gaze to the Lord and not allow the difficulties to absorb us to the point of dragging us into darkness.
St. Francis de Sales points out the indispensable key to this: entrusting ourselves to God. In fact, when we entrust ourselves to Him without reserve, we no longer place our confidence primarily in our own strength, which very soon reaches its limits, but in our Father, who at any moment can give us the grace to face the given situation in Him.
Then, step by step, we learn to better accept the cross that comes our way, however difficult it may be, simply because we are certain that our Father allows it for our good (cf. Rm 8:28).
At some point in our journey, we will come to understand more deeply that a cross allowed by God will mature our faith, and that our Father gives us not only “milk” to drink, but also solid food (1 Cor 3:1-2). Then we may even come to the point of thanking the Lord for taking us so seriously in our intention to follow Him.