God is generous

Lately I've been thinking about the difference between taking and receiving. Although both result in the attainment of something, the method of attainment is fundamentally different. When we take something, we evidence an attitude of entitlement, impatience, self-sufficiency or perhaps distrust. When we receive something, we practice the attitudes of humility, gratitude and trust.

But wow, can it be hard to receive instead of take.

It's been our predicament from the beginning: one way of viewing original sin is through this lens of taking vs. receiving. Eve grasped for the fruit of the tree. Instead of asking her good God for the knowledge she thought the fruit would give to her, she wanted to attain it for herself apart from God, taking it through her own conquest.

In fact, everything was already hers, if only she asked God for it. Instead, she falls for the serpent's trick that, through exaggeration and twisting of reality, places doubt in her mind about what God "really" said.

Here is the truth: God is generous. God is not stingy. God is not holding out on us.

We serve the God who created every good thing, the God to whom everything belongs. And this God is willing to share with us. Even more than that, this God wants us to ask for grace and good things so he can bless us abundantly, deeply, richly.

The primacy of grace states that God always acts first. It is our role to cooperate with this grace by asking for it.

At a retreat I recently went on, Fr. Jason Schumer, vice-rector for Cardinal Glennon College and assistant professor of sacramental and liturgical theology at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in St. Louis, said that Christianity is about asking for the grace to be deepened within ourselves in order to receive more grace, so that we can give this abundant blessing more and more generously to others. Fr. Jason made the point that this receiving is not passive, however; rather, it's a turning of our sail to receive the grace that will move us where we need to go. We do that through prayer and through spending time with Jesus, by simply being with him.

Another of Fr. Jason's points that stuck out to me is this: God is simple. God does not manipulate us or tell us one thing only to do another. God is straightforward and leads with peace. We can trust God.

The core of anxiety, Fr. Jason said, is not believing or knowing how loved and how taken care of by God we are. We don't have to take for ourselves with God; we can ask in faith as children ask their parents for what they desire, and we can trust that our God will give us something good. Because, after all, which of us would give a child we loved something that couldn't nourish when they asked for something that could?

Let's stop trying to be so self-sufficient, figuring everything out and doing everything for ourselves. Instead, we can make a line from the Novena of Surrender to the Will of God our own prayer: "O Jesus, I surrender myself to you. Take care of everything!"