An 18th Sunday after Pentecost To Help Us When We Fret or Fuss Over Stuff That We Shouldn't

So many of us fret or fuss over stuff we really shouldn't. If you're exempt from this fussy plague, count your blessings. But I suspect you're in a minority. To the rest of us, needlessly fussing as we do from time to time, read on.

But first, on this 18th Sunday after Pentecost, we welcome October, the month devoted to Our Lady's Holy Rosary. This follows our recollection of and devotion to Our Lady's Sorrows throughout September.

The knowledge of these special devotions is one of the great blessings we receive from following the Liturgical Calendar throughout the year. It's not something all Catholics do. But it's certainly doable with a bit of effort. In fact, the effort required really shouldn't prevent any Catholic anywhere in the world, no matter his or her circumstances, to get in the swing of following the Liturgical Calendar.

Once we do this, we'll wonder why we didn't make the effort long before.

With that pitch for the Liturgical Calendar, let's switch gears back to our little series of spiritual gems from Father Gerald Vann, O.P. As he did last Sunday, he'll help us to manage the anxiety and stress which our world seems to spoon out in great dollops to so many of us these days. Father will lead with a situation where we feel helpless in the face of something bad happening that we can't control or avoid.

“Sometimes it is when we are mere spectators that we find it hardest not be agitated and to fret: we see some tragedy impending and we feel powerless to prevent it: but we must try to see that our fretting is really in the last resort a form of egoism, a lack of faith and trust in God and dependence on God: our business should be to pray hard (we need never be mere spectators) but then to try to say, Thy will be done. Sometimes it is when we have started, and slowly built up, some project that we feel convinced is good, is for God, and then it is wrecked by circumstances outside our control, we want to grumble, we want to rebel; but no, we should remind ourselves that we never really know, in our tiny glimpse of God’s plan, what in the long run is really failure and what is success. Sometimes it is over ourselves, our own state of soul, that we become agitated in the bad sense: we cannot seem to cope with this or that temptation, we cannot seem to improve; but once again we must try to live in the present: doing our very best here and now, and neither brooding over our past failures nor letting ourselves sink into a sort of practical despair about the future. All things are in the hands of God.   

“Once again it is a question of training ourselves, and of starting in small ways. Think of some example of the sort of thing that causes you, individually, to become agitated and to fuss. It might be the missing of a train: you are on your way to some important duty, and it seems to be God’s will that you should do it; but you miss the train, and then you begin to fume and fret; you ‘get into a state’, and all to no purpose; whereas you should be telling yourself: Well, I thought God wanted me to catch the train, but He evidently didn’t, and so that’s that; if He wants me here, His will be done. And then you could fill in the time doing something useful instead of pacing up and down the platform like a caged lion and exacerbating your nerves and wasting your time.”

We need not feel helpless if we immediately get down to praying, rather than fretting. Add in "Thy Will be done" and we've made our initial effort complete.

In the case where our own considerable effort - something we deem valuable and important - has been ruined by outside circumstances, switch from grumbling to wondering if perhaps God has deemed a failure to be better for us than a success.

The same applies to the various and sundry temptations we all experience. No need to obsess or fret over them. Inevitably we've likely failed at avoiding one or more in the past, but dwelling on that won't help us in the present. All it might do is push us to despair. If we truly believe all things are in God's hands, we'll have little trouble avoiding all that drama.

If we possess the desire to improve our spiritual lot by responding to difficulties as Father notes, but frequently fall short of our aspiration, we can follow Father's advice to practice, starting with small things. Fussiness - certainly not a sin - provides a good area for focus. The example of missing the train is splendid and captures many like situations we've all faced from time to time.

A simple litmus test to see whether we've made or are making any progress might be to notice when we get worked up over anything - especially the small stuff. If we don't sweat the small stuff, we're doing OK. If we do, then we go back to the drawing board and try, try again. 

And at those inevitable times when we fall short, recall that God uses these to help us get stronger and ultimately grow closer to Him. 

Happy Sunday!