Yes, we can!

WE need these days to develop and continually strengthen our sense of confidence and optimism, since we now seem to be buffeted right and left with pressures, challenges, problems, difficulties and controversies.

We have to consciously do this now, otherwise it’s very likely that we can slip into despair or bitterness, and that would not be good for us. In fact, some reports have it that the number of cases of mental illness, even of educated people cracking up and flipping, has increased lately.

We cannot allow fears, uncertainty, doubts, pressures, anguish, anxieties and worries, to bully us to depression and helplessness. We need not only to stay alive, but also to be vibrant, active, with a keen sense of direction.

We have to be wary when signs or symptoms of creeping sadness and a gripping sense of meaninglessness in life come. We have to react immediately. The ideal situation when we are faced with some trouble should be what St. Paul once described:

“We are afflicted in every way, but not constrained; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed…” (2 Cor 4,8-9) In fact, we have to know how to convert crisis situations into moments of salvation and perfection.

For this purpose, we can use that reply made by the apostles James and John together with their mother, when our Lord asked them whether they could “drink the chalice” that he was going to drink, meaning, whether they were willing to accept the suffering our himself was going to have.

They simply and boldly said, “We can,” a reply that has reverberated through the ages and has infused unaccountable impulses of courage and hope to many people. We too can repeat these words many times during the day, doing it with the same spirit with which the apostles said it, so we can at least feel good and attract God’s power.

As much as possible, we should avoid losing our peace of mind and our sense of joy, even as we unavoidably get into situations of excitement and suspense, or worse, situations of failures and mistakes.

This is a skill we have to learn to acquire—how to remain calm and confident, sporty and flexible, knowing how to survive and make do with whatever situation, and in fact, how to derive good even from mishaps.

And we can do it when we earnestly pray, meditate on God’s word, when we make many acts of faith and hope and love. We have to remember that only in God can we find meaning for all and every situation and predicament we can meet in life.

That’s because God is our Creator, our Father, our all. He is the author of reality, and therefore the standard and measure of everything that happens in our life. With his providence, he is always with us, guiding us, showing us the way, telling us how to understand the different events in our life.

We should avoid just relying on our reasoning alone, or on our cleverness, our human resources and powers. These would not be enough. In fact, they themselves are in need of a deeper and higher principle. We actually have a yearning for God, except that that yearning oftentimes gets muffled by our earthly concerns.

We may not exactly know the scope and limits of our capabilities, but it’s good that with trust in God, we launch out into the world and into the future and the many challenges around, with extreme sense of confidence and optimism.

In a sense, we ought to have a kind of entrepreneurial spirit, willing to break new grounds in our earthly life and condition, but always aware that we are doing everything with God and for God.

This is the way to make things moving, to effect drastic changes and necessary transformation of persons and societies, and to become knowing and willing instruments of God in his providence over us and over all creation.

We need to have trust in God, because without him, then we would end up trusting in something else or merely in ourselves, and that would be wrong. We should not be afraid that such trust would take away our sense of freedom and initiative and self-reliance.

Rather, our trust in God will enhance to the maximum our sense of duty, because God himself will tell us so. Precisely the parable of a man giving his servants money and asking them to do business with the money is about this.