Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 03/17/24 He Leadeth Me: The Simple Secret

Episode Date: March 16, 2024

Homily from the Fifth Sunday of Lent. You don't have to find God's will in this moment and these circumstances...this moment and these circumstances are God's will for you. The greatest lesson that anyone of us can learn is simple, but it is not always easy: you can trust God in every moment and all circumstances. Mass Readings from March 17, 2024: Jeremiah 31:31-34 Psalms 51:3-4, 12-15Hebrews 5:7-9 John 12:20-33

Welcome to Sunday homilies with me, Father Mike Schmitz. I hope today's homily inspires and motivates you, and I also hope that it leaves you hungry for the one who gave everything to feed you. If you want to get this in other Sunday Mass resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up at ascensionpress.com slash Sunday, or by texting Sunday to 33777.7. You can also follow or subscribe on your podcast app for weekly notifications. God bless.

The Lord be with you. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John. Chapter 12 verses 20 through 33. Some Greeks who had come to worship at the Passover feast came to Philip, who was from Batseda and Galilee, and asked him, Sir, we would like to see Jesus. Philip went and told Andrew, then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them,

The hour has come for the son of man to be glorified. Amen. Amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat. But if it dies, it produces much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it. And whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me.

And where I am, there also will my servant be. The father will honor whoever serves me. I am troubled now. Yet what shall I say? Father saved me from this hour? It was for this purpose. that I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name.

Then a voice came from heaven. I have glorified it, and will glorify it again. The crowd heard it and said it was thunder, but others said, an angel has spoken to him. Jesus answered and said, This voice did not come for my sake, but for yours. Now is the time of judgment on this world.

Now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself. He said this, indicating the kind of death he would die. The Gospel of the Lord. I invite you to have a seat. So, I don't know if you've ever thought about this. Like sometimes when you see someone do something awesome or something impressive,

a lot of times the question you ask is just like how. And it's not just like, how did you do the thing? It's like, so you see someone who like they're raising their kids and their kids seem all together. Like you go to church or something and their kids are like really well behaved and they all kind of walk in and march. you know, they generally like the right time, they sit there, behave, they don't fight with each other. The question a lot of times you ask someone like that is, oh my gosh, your kids are so well behaved, what's your secret? Or if you see like someone just, you know, someone who looks like they have it all together, they're just like they're able to not only, you know, they seem like you get enough

sleep or they seem like you get their work done, they seem like they're taking care of themselves. And the question, it's like, how do you do that? Like, what's your secret? In fact, you know, I talked to a guy just last week at the gym and he had just, just, He did some what they call body recomposition stuff where he grew in lean muscle mass and lost some lost some fat. And I was like, I knew I was going to give this homily this upcoming Sunday. And so I was like, bro, what's your secret? Like how did you do that kind of thing?

And the crazy, the interesting thing I think is whenever you ask someone like, you know, you did the thing, what's your secret is almost, it's almost never a secret. It's almost always one of the situations where like actually the thing that I did was really, really simple. It's the thing that everyone knows. Like when it comes to, you know, children's behavior, although that's kind of maybe a more nebulous kind of a situation. But when it comes to everything's put together, when it comes to the body recomposition, I said, what's your secret? He's like, well, I was hungry a lot over

the last three months. I'm like, okay, that's the reality, right? Sometimes the secret can be simple, but it's rarely easy. You know, for the last, this whole Lent, we've been following Father Walter Chiswick, right? He was this American priest who was a Jesuit missionary to Russia. And then when he got to Russia, you know, he's accused of being Soviet Russia. He's accused to being a Vatican spy. During the Cold War, he was a war. He was an war. He was an war. He was interrogated in solitary confinement for not only one year interrogations, but five years of interrogations. He then spent about 15 years in the Soviet gulag in Siberia.

And then after he got out of the Soviet gulag, he ministered all across Siberia as a priest in secret. When he got back to the United States and people knew of his, this incredible life, they knew of his incredible faith that he survived the solitary confinement, then he survived the gulag, they survived like life in Siberia. question people asked him again and again was what was your secret. In fact, he wrote about it in the book. He says, many people from newsmen to housewives ask me over and over again how I managed to survive the years in Soviet prisons and the labor camps of Siberia. He said, my answer has always been

and can only be that I survived on the basis of the faith others may find too simple and naive. So basically, in the answer to the question, Father Walter, how did you do it? Like, what's your secret. He said it's, it's, it's, the secret is simple. In fact, it's so simple, you might think that it's simplistic. You might think it's too naive. How could a person persist? How can an ordinary man, remember, an ordinary Christian? How was he able to survive such an extraordinary ordeal? He said, it's nothing more than a simple secret. And that simple secret can be boiled down to one word. And that one word is trust. Like, trust, that's, that's the simple secret. Like, what's your secret? Through every moment and in every moment, Father Walter knew that

he could trust God. You know, the crazy thing about this is that he already knew it. When he became a priest, he already knew he could trust God. When he went to Poland to try to get to Russia, he already knew he could trust God. But he learned through the solitary confinement, through the Soviet gulag, he learned how deeply that trust could actually go. That his trust in God became so profound that he put it like this. And this is his, his words. He said, the simple secret is, I do not need to find God's will in this moment and in these circumstances. This moment and these circumstances are God's will for me. That's the simple secret. That this, this, this person right in front of me, that's God's will for me. This joy that I'm

experiencing, that's God's will for me. This rest he's calling me into, this is God's will for me. this labor, this work that God is calling right in front of me, this labor, this failure, this is God's will for me. Even, even this suffering that I'm going through, this is God's will for my life right now. Now, this simple circuit is so profound that we have to stop on this for a moment because we need to be reminded of who God is. Before we go into this simple but deep secret, we have to be reminded of the very nature of God.

Remember that God is good. that God is not just good. God is entirely good. So we know this, that God never directly wills evil because he can't. Because since God, by his nature, right, God is goodness itself. Everything that directly comes from God is good.

And yet we realize this. We know the truth is that, but Father Walter and so many other people, they suffered, they were abused, they were killed even. And we can ask the question, wait, how can that be God's will? In order to answer that question, we have to ask another question. What do we mean when we say God's will?

I think in order to understand what we mean, we need a deeper and truer understanding of that term. Because we need to understand who God is. And this is one of the reasons we need to understand who God is. One of the reasons why I cannot recommend enough that we need to get familiar with the scriptures. We actually need to have a lens where we look at the world and we look at God through the lens of how he's revealed himself. That's why if you have not started yet, if you've had not yet ever read through the Bible, if you're not ever listened, there's a podcast out there that goes takes you all the way through. Like, if you have never done that, it's so important to do that.

Why? Because if we don't get rooted in God's word, then we just have our imagination of who God is. But if we allow God to speak to us through his own word, then he gets to tell us, no, actually, you can trust me. Even in brokenness, you can trust me. That even in distress, you can trust me. Because I'm involved in all of it. So what do we mean when we say the will of God? We mean two things.

There are what you might call, quote, unquote, two wills of God. First, there's God's perfect will and there's God's permissive will. So God's perfect will is, we'd say like this, this is what God wills directly. This is what he directly wants to happen, like life and love and joy and healing and hope. All of those things, again, God's perfect will, to say it like this, this is what God wants. This is what God directly wants. His permissive will is this is what God allows. And so even things like suffering, even things like abuse, even things like death, can fall under God's permissive

will, again, not because he directly wants them to happen, but he allows them to happen. And the big question comes back, of course, we want to ask right now, why? Why suffering? Why does God tolerate this? Why does He tolerate us to go through so much suffering in this world? And the short answer is there is no short answer. In fact, the catechism says that in so many words, the cadizum points to the fact that the short answer is there is no short answer. The catechism points out that actually the only answer to the problem of evil, the only answer to the problem of how in the world could God allow so much evil in the world

is the whole gospel. That the entire gospel is an answer to the question. Why does God allow this to happen? But to make it as simple as possible, God's permissive will, what he allows to happen for two reasons. One is to maintain and preserve our human freedom. Right? Because God made us to love. God made us for joy. He made us to choose him.

He made us to be like him in this world. But if we're going to be free, we can't only be free to choose good. We have to also be free to choose its opposite. We can't only be free to love. We have to also be free, truly free, to do the opposite of love. So why does God allow evil?

Well, to maintain and preserve human freedom. And secondly, because this is the harder one, because he knows he can bring about a greater good. The reason why God allows us, why his permissive will allow his suffering, is because he knows he can bring about a greater good. And I know that this is challenging. but this is the simple secret.

That doesn't make it easy. So years ago, I was in a place called Yad Vashem. Yad Vashem is the Jewish Holocaust Memorial Museum in Israel. And it's just, if you've ever been there, if you've been to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C., it is overwhelming. It's an incredibly somber place because you're looking at these images

and reading these stories and even sometimes seeing videos of the torment, the torture, the abuse, the suffering, the evil that people went through. And so as you're walking through this memorial museum, I mean, no one's talking. No one's even looking at each other. They're just kind of like, we're just absorbing everything.

So it's quiet. And at one point, I was just walking through and dressed like a priest, right? And this one young Jewish boy from the United States came up to me. He just out of nowhere. He must have been 13 to 15 years old somewhere in there. And he said, yeah, so my dad's cousins were killed in the Holocaust. And just out of nowhere. I was like, okay, you know, just trying to maintain like, oh, I'm sorry.

That's horrible. And it is. And he kept talking, like, yeah, this and this and this. I'm just kind of like, again, we're the only two people talking. And pretty soon his dad walks up. And his dad, in my memory, his dad was this huge man, just enormous human being. And his son looks at his dad, said, dad, this guy wants to know about your cousins who died in the Holocaust.

And I was like, ah, I, and the man was, he was kind of taken aback. And he was like, I just, well, yeah, so it was my mom's, you know. And then obviously he stopped and said, wait, so why do you want to know about? know about my cousins? And I was like, sir, I am so sorry. I was just walking through here and your son started talking to me. I, you know, with respect, I don't, I don't, you know. And he was like, oh, okay, and he knew his son. He's like, yeah, my son does that sometimes. He talks to people. Like, yeah, so just I'll let you go back to taking in the moment. And I started walking away. And the man had enough time to kind of regain his composure. And I heard, as I was walking away,

I heard this voice, his voice say, wait, get back here. And it was like this commanding voice. and I was like, shoot, what's going on? So I turned around. He said, get over here right now. And I'm like, okay. And so he said, you're a Christian, right? And I'm just like a priest. I'm like, yeah, he said, okay.

And he's very, very clearly distressed. I mean, the whole scene, of course, is already charged with emotion that you can see this is going on. There's something that's just been building up inside of him. And he says, okay, I need to ask you this question. I've never understood this. He said, you Christians, you blame Jews for the death of Jesus, right? That you blame us, that we're the cause of Jesus' death.

So he says, but you also believe that. Jesus' death is what saved the world. So rather than blaming us Jews, you should be thanking us, shouldn't you? And I was like, I don't know what to do right now. I'm like, I am not in a place to answer this theological question. We just prayed to the Lord and just, okay, well, two things. As Catholics, we don't blame Jews for the death of Jesus. Just we need to understand that.

That, yes, there were some Jews involved and some Romans involved in the death of Jesus. But Catholic theology says that it wasn't just the individuals involved in that moment that killed Jesus. I said, my Catholic theology teaches me that it was my sins that brought Jesus to the cross. That was me. It was my sins that brought Jesus to the cross and it was his love that kept him on the cross. In fact, I don't know if you guys know this, but in the movie The Passion of the Christ, Jim Mell Gibson was the director of this movie. He doesn't make any appearance in the entire movie except for one scene, and it's only his hands.

It's the scene where Jesus' hands are nailed to the cross. the hands doing the nailing are Mel Gibson's hands. Because he wanted to say in this symbolic way that it's no, it's not the Jews' fault, it's not even the ancient Romans, it's my sin. So I said that to the man. I said, no, we don't believe the Jews killed Jesus. We believe it's my own sins. That was what was responsible for bringing him to the cross.

And it was his love for us that kept him on the cross. And he said, okay, that makes sense. And he said, but what about the other thing? What about how, you know, why shouldn't you thank us for his death if you blame Jews? I said, well, remember the story of Joseph? Because of course he does in the Hebrew scriptures, know the story of Joseph. The story of Joseph in the book of Genesis, you have the story of, you know, the second to the youngest of these brothers. And Joseph, his brothers want to kill him.

But instead of killing him, they sell him to slavery. And he's not only sold into slavery, he's also placed in prison. He goes through all these torments over the course of his young life. Until finally, he's actually elevated to being second in command of the whole nation. of Egypt next to Pharaoh. Why? Because God appeared to him in a vision and revealed to him that there'd be seven years of feasting followed by seven years of famine. So then during the feasting times, they stored up rations and whatnot. So during the fasting or feasting or the drought time, they're able to have more food. People of Israel then came to Egypt, got food.

Joseph was able to save the lives of thousands, if not millions of people because of what he went through, at the end of the whole story, his brothers come to Joseph, the ones who sold them into slavery. They think that he's going to take his vengeance on them and try to kill them. And what he says to them is this powerful words, he says, you meant evil against me. But God meant it for good. I said to the man here in the Yad of Hashem, I said, that's what we believe about Jesus. That here's a horrible evil that God allowed, that got permitted, and God was present to and that brought about a great salvation. In fact, we even have it in today's gospel. In John's gospel today, you have Jesus saying essentially this is going to happen again,

and that what happened with Joseph was a foretaste of what's going to happen in him. He says, when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself. Now, what Jesus is pointing to is that worst moment in history. Again, the worst moment in history is that God became vulnerable and we murdered him. And Jesus is saying, but when I'm lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself. that the worst moment in history will be used to bring about the greatest good in history the salvation of the world. The man heard that and said,

okay, that makes sense. I can see that. I can see how God can allow evil, his permissive will can allow evil because he knows he can bring about a greater good. Even if that greater, even if that evil is hard because, I mean, what is Jesus even saying today's gospel too? Not only, yes, when I'm lifted up from the earth, I will draw into myself, all meant to myself, but he also says, I'm troubled now.

You know, what should I say? Father saved me from this hour. He says, it was for this purpose that I came to this hour, and that's the simple secret. It was for this purpose, for this moment that I came to this hour. That's why Father Chisak is able to say, the secret is, I don't need to find God's will in this moment and in these circumstances because this moment and these circumstances are God's will for me. This is so difficult, this simple secret is so difficult that has to be learned over and over again. In fact, Father Chisak, he even says this. He says, I had to continuously learn to accept God's will, not as I wished it to be,

not as it might have been, but as it actually was at the moment. Because, you know, he came to know that deep truth while he was in solitary confinement. But he did not stay in solitary confinement. In fact, after five years of solitary, he was put on a train and brought to Siberia to the Gullogs. And he said almost immediately, as he's brought from solitary confinement on that train, he met the Russian underworld. And these were men who would just easily kill you. In fact, the moment they met him, they told him.

took Father Chizak's clothes. They just took him because the ethic of the underworld was, if you can't keep your stuff, you don't deserve your stuff. And so Father Chizak had to relearn this. Wait, this is God's will for me? This moment is God's will for me? He says it like this. He says, it had been easy during periods of prayer and contemplation to imagine future happenings and the way I'd respond to them. We all do that, right? Where it's just like, okay, when the day comes that I do, here's how I'm going to act. He says it was easy to do that. But in light of the vision I enjoyed, it was easy to float freely and euphorically into the ready to accept whatever God might have prepared for me there.

But the future was now present, as is always the case, and it was a lot more unmanageable and full of bustle than it had seemed in the abstract. To put it another way, I had been alone with God, as it were, on the mountaintop. But now I had to come down once more into the hubbub, the turmoil, and dissension of the camp, and somewhat like Moses, the first thing I discovered was the presence of evil. He said, I realized almost immediately that all those same questions, all those same doubts, all the same fears, all the same kind of things that are like, I need to cling to my will, came back up again.

And I realized, too, that it's one thing to give up such doubts and questions in a moment of grace and inspiration and spiritual insight, but it's another to prevent them from rising spontaneously when the harsh and rough circumstances of a moment of daily life drive from the mind, everything except the thoughts of here and now. He goes on to say, like, I didn't know how I would react to these moments. I didn't know how I would react. But it was precisely this reason, the reality that I didn't know how I would. how I would react was precisely why I had resolved to accept all things, come what may, as from his hands.

Because I don't know what's going to happen. That's why I had resolved to accept all things, come what may, as from his hands, because that's the simple secret. I do not need to find God's will in this moment and in these circumstances, because this moment and these circumstances are God's will for me. That's why he said, I have resolved to accept all things as from his hands. You know, there's another character in the Old Testament. There's a snapshot moment of his life where this is also the case. His name King David.

And we know David, David's a flawed character. He's a holy character. He's a sacred character, but he's also a flawed character. And at one moment in David's life, after he's the king, after he has his whole family, because of a number of events that some were David's fault and somewhere someone else's fault, David found himself on the run from his own son, Absalom. If you know anything about the story, is that Absalom's one of his sons, that David was, David could have been a better father, but he wasn't.

And as a result of that and some other things, Absalom is actively trying to kill his own father. And so David, in order to escape death, he's fleeing from the city of Jerusalem. He's fleeing from his kingdom. And as he's fleeing with his army, with the rest of his family, there's this man named Shime. And Shemay is a tribe of Benjamin, right? So he's the relative of Saul, the king that David replaced. and Shemay is walking along next to David and next to his soldiers and he's throwing dirt and stones and spitting at them and he's basically saying he says get out get out of the city you man of blood

you worthless man may the lord avenge on you all the blood of the house of Saul etc he's just cursing him again and again and so one of David's men his name is Abashai Abashai says to David David king my king let me go over and lop off his head like this this guy this dog should not curse you. Let me just kill him right here. And David looks at Abashai in this moment of just loss, in this moment of uncertainty,

in this moment of degradation, this moment of humiliation. And David says, if he is cursing because the Lord has told him curse David, then who shall say, why have you done so? He goes on to say, he says, behold, my own son seeks my life. How much more now may this Benjaminite,

leave him alone and let him curse because the Lord has told them to. Here is David saying, I accept all things as from God's hands. Here's Father Chazak, I accept all things as from God's hands. Even this humiliation, I accept as from his hands.

And that's the key to because sometimes I think, I don't know about you, but I think sometimes we think that, okay, it's the big moments. It's the big moments that, like, that's when I rise up and say, okay, God, this is your will right now, as opposed to realizing

that most often it's in those small moments, in the daily moments, in those times that I just, I want things to be different. Father Jizak says it like this. He says, the kingdom of God will not be brought to fulfillment on earth by one great sword-swinging battle

against the powers of darkness. But only by each of us laboring and suffering day after day as Christ labored and suffered until all things at last have been transformed. So it's just the small moments of quiet trust. It says that patient yes to the moment. It's things that we sometimes overlook and think, this is so small.

This is God's will? I mean, getting stuck in traffic. Having the coffee ready to go and the cup spills over. Just doing the thing of like, here's a person in front of you who is arguing and being rude, the person at the checkout counter who just seems to be having the worst day and taking it out on you. Those things might be seen so small. Like, how could that be God's will for me?

But that is what it is. In fact, he says this, why? Because none of it's wasted. He says between God and the individual soul, there are no insignificant moments. This is the mystery of God's providence. So it's not just the great sword swinging moments, battles. It's the small moments because there are no such thing as insignificant moments. He goes on to say, no matter how small my sufferings are, I have a choice.

I can either let them make me bitter, or I can meet them with the confidence that God will not abandon me. That's the choice. I can allow the situations of my life to make me bitter, or I can meet those situations with the confidence that God will not abandon me that's the simple secret, that this is God's will for me. I have to trust it. As we said a couple times already, it's simple, but it's not easy.

The second reading today, letter to the Hebrews. It says when Jesus was in the flesh, how did he pray? It wasn't just always calm. It wasn't always this place of bliss. It says Jesus prayed with loud cries and tears. We know that in the Garden of Githemite, Jesus Christ sweat blood. And so it's easy when we're having a good day to say, yeah, God's will isn't everything.

It is difficult when our prayers are marked by loud cries and tears. It's another thing when our prayers are marked by sweating blood. In fact, Father Chisich says this, he says, it's much easier to see the redemptive role of pain and suffering in God's plan if you're not actually undergoing pain and suffering. It says it's only by struggling with such feelings, however, that growth can occur. Every victory over discouragement gives an increase in spiritual courage, Every success, however, fleeting in finding the hand of God behind all things,

made it easier to recapture the sense of his purpose in a new day that was seemingly senseless. Again, that trust is saying this, not saying it's easy, but that that question is settled. Imagine the alternative. I mean, here's trust. God, this is your will for me. Imagine the alternative. The alternative to trust is constant suspicion. I know some people, they live a life with the burden of constant suspicion. Or he's just keep having to ask, okay, God can I still trust you? God can I still trust you? Can I trust you in this moment?

Imagine, here's Father Chisak, this is the life that he had to live was challenging enough. I cannot imagine having to live that life with the extra burden of suspicion, not knowing that he could actually trust God, but his trust in God was real. And it was not naive and it was not blind. He didn't trust God just because God had stated, hey, you can trust me. He knew he could trust God because he knew the truth, that God has become one of us.

And he lived and he suffered and he died for you and for me to prove his trustworthiness and to slay suspicion. That's why St. Paul wrote, if God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his only son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also graciously give us all things? That's why, if you've ever encountered the true and living God in Jesus Christ, that he heals the wounds of suspicion and he slays suspicion.

He heals the wounds of distrust. And that's the simple secret. I have to be willing to let go of suspicion. You know, for the one who doesn't trust, no amount of proof will ever be enough. But for the one who does trust, no more proof is needed. It's one of the reasons why I'm not that I'm not. It's one of the reasons why I encourage everyone, everyone in confession a lot of times

to prepare my penance. I'll offer them, I'll invite them to pray Psalm 3. Psalm 3 is a Psalm of trust. It's also a Psalm of David. So it's a Psalm that just states where David is declaring, God, I trust you, I know I can trust you. I can always trust you in all circumstances. I can, I'll trust you forever.

But David, this interesting thing is David did not write Psalm 3 from his palace on a throne. David wrote Psalm 3. this Psalm of trust as he was being hunted by his own son, Absalom, as we heard before. There was in the midst of time of uncertainty and confusion, in the midst of like the chaos, imagine your own son trying to kill you and you turn to the Lord and say, God, I know I can trust you. That's the simple secret. That I can trust God in every moment and in every circumstance because this moment and these circumstances, are God's will for my life.

And this is the last thing. I think that for the... You know, we do have one more week. We have Palm Sunday. But to end this... End this, I want to let Father Chazek have the last word. Because it's one thing for me to say it. It's another thing for him.

He says this, he says, For those who do not believe in God, I suppose such thoughts will seem sheer nonsense and unexplainable stupidity. He says, I've written much in this book about the will of God and his providence. I'm afraid that some readers may feel that I've made too much of it.

And to them I can only apologize. Others might feel that my belief in this matter is too simple, even naive, and they may find that my faith is not only childlike but childish. He said, I'm sorry if they feel this way. But I've written only what I know, what I've experienced. And this is where he says, many people have asked me,

from Housewives and Newsmen, how I survived. What's your secret, Father Chiswick? And my answer, it always has been and can only be that I survived on the basis of the faith that others may find too simple and naive. To those who feel disappointed, who find it hard to accept so simple an explanation, who had perhaps hoped to hear from me some secret and mysterious formula that would help them change their lives and strengthen their faith and cannot accept what I've written,

I can only express my regrets and my sympathy. Yet, no one can know greater peace. No one can achieve a greater sense of fulfillment in this life than the one who believes in this truth of the faith and strives daily to put it into practice. If it all seems too simple, you have a only to try it to find out how difficult it is. But you also only have to try it to find as well the joy and the peace and the happiness it can bring. For what can ultimately trouble the soul that accepts every moment of every day as a gift from the hands of God and strives always to do his will. If God is for us, who can be against us? Nothing. Not even death can separate us from God. Nothing can touch us that does not come from His hand and nothing can trouble us because

all things come from His hand. If this is really too simple, are we just afraid really to believe it, to accept it fully in every detail of our lives, to yield ourselves up to it in total commitment? It is the ultimate question of faith, but it is the question every one of us must answer. Then he says at the end, that is the only secret I've come to know. It's not mine alone. Christ himself spoke of it, the saints have practiced it, and others have written about it far better than I. I can only hope that what I have written

will strike a responsive chord in some who will prove a help to others, however few. And I pray that you may be one of them. That's the simple secret. You do not need to find God's will in this moment and in these circumstances. Because this moment and these circumstances are God's will for you.

The simple secret is, you can trust God.