Trust Falling Into God’s Grace
Imagine standing on a small platform, with your heels backed up to its edge, glancing over your shoulder to make sure that your friend is still standing behind you with their arms outstretched, like they said that they would be. You cross your arms over your chest, close your eyes, and count down out loud, “three…two…one…” As your legs let go of control, you are suspended in space for a matter of milliseconds, before gravity overcomes your body’s inertia and pulls you down to the earth. In that same amount of time, your friend has remained where they are, with their arms extended as a net to catch you. Thankfully, in this exercise, you had the chance to verify that your friend would be there to catch you before you let go of control.
However, if we have lived through other experiences of uncertainty in life (be it in our upbringings, relationships, illnesses, traumas, etc.), we know that we do not always have such assurances. In these circumstances, we naturally want to confirm that we can trust our surroundings, intuitions, and even our own senses. Nonetheless, when aspects of our lives are repetedly unpredictable, it is reasonable that we begin to anticipate future difficulties. Sometimes, even seemingly small challenges can lead to spiraling cynicism. Psychotherapist Dr. Gregory Popcak describes that in these circumstances, neurobiologically, “while the amygdala is triggered in the presence of a threat, it’s the hippocampus’ job to ‘take notes’ and remember that a particular event was anxiety-producing in the past. The next time [we] encounter that same event, or even something remotely similar, the hippocampus triggers the amygdala and reminds [us] that [we] ‘should’ feel anxious — even if there is no practical immediate threat present” (Unworried: A Life Without Anxiety). Over time, this cycle can lead to chronic anxiety about the countless unforeseen situations that life brings.
On our own, it can be difficult to overcome these hardwired neuropsychological systems. Oftentimes, we need the help of trained professionals and the support of family and friends to overcome anxiety. Too, we can find consolation by turning to our faith. In his work The Christian and Anxiety, Hans Urs von Balthasar, by explaining the philosophical and theological foundations of anxiety, emphasizes that Christianity provides a cure for our preoccupations by calling us to trust fall into God’s grace in the midst of our worries.
Fundamentally, anxiety is an inevitable consequence of the human condition of free will. Balthasar states that, from the beginning, our presumption to be able to arbitrate between good and evil has not been based on “a ‘creaturely anxiety’ about being able to fall,” nor “that God, withdrawing and leaving the void behind on purpose, put man in a position to be tempted” (141). Rather, “God had to leave open to man the space that made it possible for man to move away. And God could not spare man the experience of being tempted by what God had excluded and forbidden, which precisely by being forbidden acquires its power over man” (141). In His complete respect for our freedom, God had to permit the ability for us to be tempted and for us to choose to turn away from Him. However, due to the “influence of the serpent, that is, of evil plain and simple, . . . [this presumption to be able to arbitrate between good and evil] therefore belongs to the sphere of ungodliness” (141). In acting on this prideful assumption, we misuse our free will, and suffer the consequences.
When we succumb to sin, we fall prey to a certain sin-anxiety. This situation “is both effect and cause of [our] turning away from God; it encloses and incarcerates” (67). Ironically, choosing to follow our own will in a disordered way, instead of making us more free, only further enslaves us. This is because in our sinful state, “the image of God itself is damaged or destroyed”; it “is a lessening or loss of truth, a proof that a soul has wandered away from God’s world” (96). As finite creatures, we are inherently unable to determine, and oftentimes even distinguish between, what is good and what is evil. Our experience of sin-anxiety is a manifestation of the loss of our properly-directed free will. Too, even when we try to oppose the temptations of sin on our own, “the disproportion between one’s own exhaustive engagement, one’s utmost efforts, and the burden of sin and guilt . . . which is absolutely pervasive, cannot help but call forth absolute fear” (94). The realization of our own inability to defend ourselves against evil can be anxiety-provoking. Consequently, on our own, we are left to the overwhelming devices of our fallen free will, which is initially exemplified in sin-anxiety.
Part of the disorientation of sin-anxiety is the fact that we as finite creatures are trying to comprehend and deal with the infinite. Balthasar writes that “the finite spirit, whose acts of knowledge and freedom, while always focusing on some particular object, are open to the infinite” (18). Similarly, he cites Kierkegaard, who describes it as “the vertigo of the finite mind when faced with itself, with the rupture between the finite and the infinite that it finds within itself, with its own unfathomable freedom” (102). Herein lies the problem with eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. As finite creatures, there is no way that we are able to understand the fullness of truth all on our own. Balthasar tells us: “what makes anxiety anxious is the awareness of a fundamental falsehood, displacement, guilt — an awareness called forth by the absence of the One who ought to be present in this ‘Nothing’” (142). By turning toward ourselves, instead of relying on God’s goodness and wisdom, we become more aware of our own finitude in the context of the baffling infinity of freedom. As such, we succumb to “the real ‘vertigo of freedom’ . . . with its own infinite, indeterminate and unfathomable character, which can become vertiginous only because this ‘possibility’ is counterbalanced by no actuality, that is, no necessary character in the object-to-be-chosen” (132). Balthasar goes on to describe that, in this way, the world can take on “an abstract-ghostly outline which the mind, insofar as it stands in the middle of the difference [between Being and existence] during the cognitive act, can register in no other way than as anxiety” (131). From our temporal perspective, the possibilities and consequences of our life choices appear endless. Too, we are often unequipped to deal with our circumstances all on our own. However, these isolating realizations only lead to a further sense of fear.
The fear aspect of sin-anxiety arises from us as subjects being exposed to, and powerless against, evil objects. Balthasar, citing St. Thomas Aquinas, defines the object of this fear as “‘a difficult future evil that cannot easily be avoided’” (119). He highlights that “what is essential to anxiety is the suspension of the reassuring balance of forces between subject and object and, thus, a kind of exposure of the subject to the object” (120). On our own, neither are we able to foresee all dangers, nor are we able to adequately respond to them. As such, “the distancing movement of anxiety actually excludes this subjectivity and thus creates the free space in which the thing can emerge in its objectivity” (119). The void between ourselves as subjects and all of the possible objects with which we have to contend can lead us to feel helpless against the evils that we do encounter in our lives.
However, instead of being helpless, Christianity presents us with the opportunity to be hopeful. Contrary to that of fear, Aquinas describes the object of hope as “‘a future good that is difficult but possible to attain’” (119). Though realistic about the challenges of life, hope carries with it the possibility of attaining some future good (as highlighted in “Hope Sinks” and “Omnia Cooperantur in Bonum: On Faith, Hope, and Trust”). Additionally, “hope’s movement of trust includes, together with the concept of attainability, the whole subjectivity of striving and of what is ‘good for me’” (119). This subjective striving restores our true sense of our human freedom, which is having the ability to choose the good (as emphasized in “You Are Who You Are: Fostering Authenticity and Wholeheartedness”). However, Balthasar cautions that “even when the grace of sharing in the anxiety of the Cross is granted, the distance between the one who suffers in compassion and the Redeemer who originally suffered is maintained in its entirety, and the anguished soul is aware of it” (105–106). This reality of the inevitability of suffering is at the heart of Christianity. Bathlasar further emphasizes:
“Anxiety has arrived on the scene with the void, and Christ’s redemption does not eliminate this void. His redemption, to be sure, brings God’s fullness, but it conveys it into the form of this void. It is said of the Redeemer that he emptied himself and made his way into the void. The void is thereby filled, to be sure: God is there. But he is no longer there in the way he was present in the evening breeze of paradise — as that Presence which, for man and his nature, is the most real, in which and through which everything else gains its reality. Instead, God is present as the unfelt fullness, as fullness in the void.” (142–143)
Again, this void is a result of free will. God cannot override its existence because doing so would be contradictory to His love for us. However, God does not abandon us; rather, through the Incarnation, He enters into this void to be near to us.
By becoming incarnate, Jesus infuses the human experience of anxiety with His grace. Balthasar notes that
“In standing outside of eternity and entering into time, the Son of Man has known anxiety and therein, as in everything he was, did, and suffered, he has translated something incomprehensible and divine into human language (that is, after all, what revelation is): God’s fear and trembling for the world, for his creation, which is on the verge of being lost.” (146)
Through Jesus’ taking on human flesh, we as God’s creatures are able to sense and to understand God’s love for us. Balthasar agrees that “by becoming a visible man and founding the visible Church, he has made accessible to man an abundance of visible helps as found in the organs and functions of the Church” (150). However, Jesus does not only make evident God’s love for us.
Too, by entering into the fallen aspects of our human nature, He redeems them. Jesus shows us that He wants to fully experience our sufferings as He endured His Passion “without any consolation or relief, since from it was to come every consolation and relief for the world” (75). The grotesque character of the Passion clearly reveals the totality with which Jesus understands human suffering. Yet, “Christ has borne the anxiety of the world so as to give to the world that which is his: his joy, his peace” (88). It is only through His suffering and death that our fear and anxiety can be restored to joy and peace. As such, He invites us to follow Him and to allow Him to accompany us in and to redeem all of our anxieties (as discussed in “Pase lo que pase, Immanu’el”)
Nonetheless, once we commit to following Christ by relinquishing the anxiety of sin, we are left to accept another anxiety — the anxiety of the good. In his How to Listen When God is Speaking, Fr. Mitch Pacwa describes that when people move beyond sin-anxiety, they may “experience the evil spirit trying ‘to harass with anxiety, to afflict with sadness, to raise obstacles backed by fallacious reasonings that disturb the soul,’ thus preventing the soul from advancing.” When we commit to overcoming sin, we will be exposed to a different type of apprehension, which too requires a process of conversion. However, contrary to that of sin, this anxiety of the good “has as its meaning and purpose to open [us] up to God, in [our] cry for mercy” (67). This opening up to God is the continual process of the Christian faith journey. Thankfully,
“In the place of sin-anxiety, [Christianity] provides [us] with anxiety-free access to God in faith, love, and hope —which, however, because they stem from the Cross, can in and of themselves put forth a new, grace-filled form of anxiety that stems from catholic solidarity and shares in Christ’s work of atonement.” (96–97)
When we unite our sufferings with those of Jesus on the Cross and those of the Mystical Body of Christ, they can be transformed into redemptive acts both for ourselves and for the whole world (as highlighted in “In Atonement for Our Sins and Those of the Whole World: Offering Suffering as Reparation for the Misuse of Free Will”).
This anxiety of the good is witnessed as process of narrowing and expanding. Balthasar notes that “if the anxiety of man who is closed in on himself and isolated amounts to a constriction and a loss of communication, then the anxiety granted from the Cross is, on the contrary, the fruit and result of a communication: it is an expansion, a dilatatio of the love found on the Cross” (89). He even employs the image that it is similar to “the anguish experienced in the contraction of the birth canal . . . [which] is a subjective feeling of narrowing during an objective process of expanding” (79). This is reminiscent of the fictional story that Henri Nouwen tells about a baby who sees the constricting contractions of his delivery as preparations for going to another, more beautiful place (as recounted in “Kindlichkeit: An Explanation and Antidote for Suffering”). Likewise, Balthasar repeats that
“what experientially seems constricting and frightening to the believer is in truth enlarging, a fruitful dilatatio of the birth canal, an interior trembling that expands faith, hope, and love. Even if subjectively it were mortal terror, objectively it is greater blessedness, a participation in the everlasting trinitarian ecstasy” (147–148).
With this perspective we can come to understand the stresses of the anxiety of the good as preparations for our entrance into an even greater reality. In truth, “Beatitude not only is possible under pressure, when one is objectively “in dire straits” (“anxiety” in fact is derived from angustiae, narrowness, straits), it is required” (85). Herein, we can see that the experience of anxiety of the good is actually necessary for our Christian growth.
However, this positive change can only occur through a shift away from ourselves and a turning toward God. For, the love of God “is in all respects the opposite of the sinner’s experience of anxiety: it is instead a turning toward, an availability, life, fruitfulness, security and support, expansiveness, liberation” (90). By entering into and redeeming our experience of anxiety, God reveals His love for us, which is the complete opposite of our shamefully anxious state. This choice “in which [we dare] to place [ourselves] and the whole world in the hand of the One who can dispose of [us] for death and for life” — surely “can be loaded with anxiety” — but “is in turn nothing other than [our] act of faith” (90). Though surrendering to God can be anxiety-provoking, it is nothing more than as John the Baptist says, “He must increase; I must decrease” (John 3:30).
This expanding and turning toward is a relinquishing of our own control and a trust fall into God’s providence. Balthasar puts it clearly that: “Faith that loves and hopes is ultimately indifferent even to anxiety and nonanxiety. In and of [ourselves we] can presume nothing, hence [we] must await even this from God” (147). Too, each of us is “the one who is decided, who has no other choice, and who experiences therein [their] entire freedom and liberation” (135). When we trust fall into God’s grace, we ultimately become indifferent to what happens in our lives, knowing that whatever comes to pass is God’s providential will for us. This is clearly described in other works, including
St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises (“We want not health rather than sickness, riches rather than poverty, honor rather than dishonor, long rather than short life, and so in all the rest.”),
Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence (“Either give me so much money that my heart will be satisfied, or inspire me with such contempt for it that I no longer want it. Either free me from poverty, or make it so pleasant for me that I would not exchange it for all the wealth in the world. Either take away my suffering, or — which would be to your greater glory — change it into delight for me, and instead of causing me affliction, let it become a source of joy.”),
He Leadeth Me (“I had continuously to learn to accept God’s will — not as I wished it to be, not as it might have been, but as it actually was at the moment. And it was through the struggle to do this that spiritual growth and a greater appreciation of his will took place.”), and
How to Listen When God Is Speaking (“Neither option matters to me except insofar as one gives greater glory to God than the other. Seeking to give greater glory to God is one of the most important principles of discerning God’s will for my life.”).
In all of these examples, the authors (coincidentally all Jesuits) exemplify their holy indifference to the will of God, which essentially negates the effects of anxiety on us.
This is so because, though the act of surrendering to God does put us at risk for more anxiety, it also opens us up further to His grace. Balthasar claims that this
“ever-increasing defenselessness is an ever-increasingly open stance toward God and for God, and hence an ever-increasing influx and indwelling of God’s power in man. No one is as unarmed and exposed as the saint is toward God, and therefore no one is as ready to be deluged by every anxiety; yet this is the quintessence of courage and armament — by God.” (154–155)
Being defenseless is frightening, but it is the only way for us to allow God to enter into our lives. He reinforces that
“this courage becomes . . . Christian fortitude, however, at the point where the plan finds its conclusion and origin in God himself, so that from man’s perspective . . . receptive indifference becomes the all-decisive criterion: in the form of the courage to say Yes in every instance to every word of God that may affect my life.” (153–154)
As long as we continue to hold onto some sense of control, we are still able to be overcome by anxiety. Contrarily, the more that we surrender ourselves to God, the further we will be fortified in our ability to trust fall into His will. As such, with St. Paul we can begin to say, “yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).
In this way, the darkness of anxiety can actually become an intensification of the light of joy. Similar to how St. John of the Cross speaks of the dark night of the soul, Balthasar highlights that “such a ‘dark night’ is nothing other than the privation of this light”; yet “the more profound the antithesis, the privation is, the more complete and effective the night becomes” (107). Put another way, the greater the darkness, the more God is able to enter into and to illuminate it. When we allow Him to work in our anxieties, they can be viewed as “an intensification of light and of joy, a ‘darkness bright as day’, because it is suffering out of joy, anxiety out of exultation: it is a sign of God’s ever-greater confidence in the one who believes” (147–148). When we trustingly hand over our worries to God, they are able to take on a new purpose in His providential plan. Additionally, the visible good that He does with our crosses can then be repeated reminders to us of His love and care for us (as noted in “Our Daily Bread: Reflecting on Our Desolation in Times of Consolation”). This is truly how a seemingly consuming darkness can be converted into an ever-expanding light.
Too, further surrender of our anxieties to God can become a confirmation to us that He trusts our free will and intentions enough to invite us on the journey to continually trust fall into His grace. Balthasar states that “God grants a (mystical or even usual) participation in the anxiety of his Son on the Cross to no believer unless he has first granted to him the entire strength of the Christian mission and joy and the entire light of faith, love, and hope” (114). Before calling us on this mission, God helps us to be released from the attachments to sin; and, He continues to sustain us with grace, as we may still be prone to succumb to our fallen free will during our faith journeys. Nonetheless, Jesus provides us the solid ground upon which we must follow Him. As Balthasar describes,
“Christianity offers man, not a bottomless pit, but solid ground — grounding in God, of course, and not in self . . . Living, efficacious faith means to walk, to be under way. Everyone who walks has ground under his feet. Faith, love, hope, unceasingly offered to man, are the ground that is constantly being pushed off under his feet.” (99–100)
As Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, He is all that we need to be sustained on the mission to which he beckons us. His calling of us to leave behind sin-anxiety and to allow our anxiety of the good to be transformed by Him is a lifelong process. However, the more that we progress in this pursuit, the more our anxieties will be unwoven and our faith emboldened (as described in “At War with God”). Ultimately, the solution remains the same — daily recommitting to trust fall into the grace of God.
The human condition of anxiety is an essential consequence of the nature of our free will and a frequent result of the unpredictable circumstances in which we find ourselves. However, in The Christian and Anxiety, Hans Urs von Balthasar describes how Christianity can be a profound solution to our endless worldly worries. For, not only does God offer expiation for our sin-anxiety, which is due to our fallen human nature. Too, Jesus enters into and redeems our experience of anxiety of the good. Through the Christian journey, we are invited into a process of expanding and turning toward God, which can transform fear into hope and darkness into light. As such, the more that we trust fall into to God’s divine providence, the further our decision to surrender to Him can be fortified because we will continually relearn how His love never fails us. As Balthasar summarizes:
“In the daring leap, something of the limitless self-giving of the Divine Persons to each other becomes visible in a flash — at the point where all ground, which is limitation, is relinquished and where man can actually sense that being in the Absolute means — hovering. Lifted up in the arms of grace, carried on the wings of love, he feels a tremor, which, in and of itself, bestows on him precisely the security needed to stand no longer on his own or on the earth but to be able to fly by a new power.” (145)
