Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [177]
If, on the other hand, the cause of our depression is a true evil, what we should do is not to try and banish it from our consciousness, conceal it from ourselves, or explain it away—and so provide it with a harmful subconscious hold on our mental life—but to set it clearly and consciously, confronting it with Christ, in the place that is objectively due to it within the universal framework of reality. We must then try to accept it consciously and expressly in an act of resignation to the will of God.
If we thus receive that evil as a cross from the hands of Christ, submitting to it expressly—taking it upon us actively, as it were, rather than merely enduring it in passive helplessness—it may still hurt no less, but it will no longer weigh us down, no longer affect us as a paralyzing poison, no longer warp our peace of mind. Finally, as regards future evils whose incidence is still uncertain, we must lay them in the hands of God, and from Christian resignation and confidence in God derive, in reference to those specified menaces, too, the attitude thus expressed in St. Paul’s words: “Be nothing solicitous” (Phil 4:6), or in the Psalmist’s: “Cast thy care upon the Lord” (Ps. 54:23).
We must truly bear the burden of care, but strive to retain our inmost peace while doing so
This is not to say that we do not have to bear the burden of concerns about future evils. Some people are inclined to shut out and pass over such concerns in a false way. They ease their consciences with the happy formula of “confidence in God,” whereas in fact they are just easy-going, and intent on avoiding unpleasant matters as long as they can possibly manage it.
We should, in truth, accept all burdens that God imposes on us, including the burden of care. We should, accordingly, prepare for all trials we see coming, and, so far as it is within our power, try to avert an evil not yet accomplished. However, the acceptance of this burden must not take away our peace. If in a general sense we acquiesce in bearing our cross; if we succeed in getting rid of the tenacious, secret resistance of the old man in us against everything that hurts our nature; if we are ready to receive everything God has meted out to us as a gift of His love and a means of our sanctification; if we surrender all self-evident claims to happiness and shake off the illusion that even on earth a state of undisturbed bliss might, after all, be attained—then we shall be able to face the threat of approaching evils, too, without losing our inward peace.
No sane man will deny it to be implicit in our terrestrial situation that the threat of great evils which close in upon us—when we have reasons to apprehend, say, the loss of a beloved person—should afflict us with anguish and care; nor are these compatible with a state of unruffled calm and unimpaired peace. Yet, in the midst of all the inevitable alarm, in our deepmost soul we can and must preserve that serene peace which flows from our surrender to God’s will and our firm belief that “God is love.”
We must remain recollected in the midst of cares
Another condition, too, has to be fulfilled so that amidst all tribulations of life we may safeguard our inward peace. We must maintain a recollected mode of life. We have seen earlier the necessity of recollection and composure as a precondition to our transformation in Christ. That motif is bound to reemerge in the present context. If, indeed, we conduct a bustling and fitful sort of life with one aim chasing the other, involving a breathless succession of disparate tensions—a sort of life which never gives us time to pause and to meditate, nor allows any