Casting all our worries onto the Father

A spiritual reflection by Chiara Lubich, Conference Call, Mollens, Switzerland, March 26, 1987

“As we are aware, our spirituality (our path to holiness) is based on a point from which all else has flowed: belief in God’s love, being conscious that we are not alone; we are not orphans, we have a Father above who loves us.

One way of applying this faith in God is when we are worried about something that makes us anxious. Sometimes it is fear for the future, or concerns about our health or impending dangers; we might be worried about members of our family or apprehensive about something we have to do; we might be overwhelmed by the shock of bad news. There are all kinds of fears.

Well then, at times like these, precisely in times when everything is uncertain, God wants us to believe in his love and asks of us an act of trust. (…) He wants us to make good use of these painful situations to prove to him that we do believe in his love. This means believing that he is a Father to us (…).

Scripture says: “Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.” (1 Pt 5:7). This means in practice that Christians must offload all their worries onto their heavenly Father, in the same way as a load is put on a beast of burden. The fact is that God is our Father and he wants his children’s happiness. This is why they unload every burden onto him. Besides, God is love and he wants his children to be love.

All these worries and fears block our soul, causing us to close in on ourselves, thereby preventing us from being open to God’s will and from loving our neighbours.

In the early times of the Focolare Movement, when the Holy Spirit was teaching us our first steps on the path of love, “casting all our anxiety onto the Father” was something we did every day, and often several times a day. In fact we were leaving behind a purely human way of living so as to live more according to God’s ways.

Worries are stumbling blocks to love. So the Holy Spirit had to teach us how to get rid of them. And he did. I remember we used to say that just as you cannot hold a hot coal in your hand, but you would drop it at once so as not to get burned, so too with the same speed we had to cast every worry onto the Father. I can’t remember any worry cast into the Father’s heart which he did not take care of. It is not always easy to believe and to have faith in God’s love. But we must make the effort to believe on every occasion, even the most tangled.

We will then witness God’s intervention time and time again. He will not desert us, he will take care of us. I know that many amongst are in difficult situations. The thought of this conference call is especially for them. But also for everyone else: There are so many situations to be faced in life!

There is such a great need that Someone else think of us! Let’s cast every worry onto him. We will then be free to love. We’ll progress faster on the path of love which, as we know, leads to holiness.”

Chiara Lubich
(Mollens, Switzerland)