Abandonment, Surrender, and Placing Our Hands in God's Hands
“O Jesus, I surrender myself to You, take care of everything!”
“Jesus, You take over!”
These two refrains have become an indispensable part of my daily life over the past few years as I’ve come to know Don Dolindo. The first refrain is from the Surrender Novena, and the second is from the Rosary of Abandonment. Many times throughout the day, as I lift my heart to God in prayer, I find myself turning again and again to these two refrains. As I do so, I can feel the tangible grace in them. When the anxieties and cares of life threaten my peace, these prayers never fail to bring me comfort, consolation, and hope.
Both of these prayers capture the essence of Don Dolindo’s spirituality in just a few words. He lived entirely united to the Will of God, and that unity was rooted in surrender and abandonment. One day in 1896, when he was 14 years old, he made an act of total surrender to the Will of God, and it became the blueprint for the rest of his life. After that day, surrender and abandonment were the air he breathed.
For Dolindo, the secret to unity with God’s Will lay in recognizing his own powerlessness and relying entirely on God’s power for everything.
“If you force your way and try to reach God, as if it were within your own power to do so, you have already stymied yourself,” he writes in his autobiography. “Your poor human attempts and your prideful efforts are in vain. However, if you abandon yourself to God, then you give Him ample freedom to vanquish you, in order to then elevate you.”
Even though he dedicated his life to practicing complete surrender and abandonment to God’s Will, Dolindo was not immune to the human temptation to anxiety.
“The other evening my soul was filled with such anxiety that I spoke foolishly,” he writes later in his autobiography. “Later I confessed it. Do You forgive me, Jesus?
“I felt I was dying from a panic attack. The devil was trying to agitate me. Contorted in pain, I cried out to You: ‘Lord Jesus, Mother Mary, have mercy on me! Be not merciless with me!’ Foolish words escaped from my lips. I wasn't even aware, because the flesh is weak indeed,” he writes.
I admit it’s a relief to know that even Dolindo struggled with anxiety at times.
It also helps me to know what he did when that happened:
“As soon as I realized what I had said,” he explains, “I ceased crying, recollected myself, and abandoned myself to You. And, with my arms in the form of a cross, I said only these words:
“Thy Will be done!”
When Dolindo suffered the temptation to anxiety, his solution was simple: he recollected himself and abandoned himself to God once more with a very short prayer. Dolindo knew that abandonment is not a single act but a refrain we repeat again and again, especially in the hardest moments of our lives.
“O Jesus, I surrender myself to You, take care of everything!”
“Jesus, You take over!”
“Thy Will be done!”
With these short prayers, we, too, can do what he did in times of anxiety: recollect ourselves and abandon ourselves to God once more. When, like Don Dolindo, we feel like we’re dying from a panic attack; when the devil is agitating us; when we’re contorted in pain; these prayers of surrender and abandonment to God’s Will are Dolindo’s inheritance to us.
As Dolindo explains, they are a way of closing our eyes and placing our hands in God’s Hands.
“This is the essence of my every act,” Dolindo writes, “for I do not act to gain knowledge or strength or prudence, but I act trusting in God and abandoning myself to Him. This is my constant way of thinking and talking: I keep my eyes closed and my hands in God's Hands. And I trust in Him.”
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A note to readers: A few months ago, I learned from a mutual friend that Grazia Ruotolo, Don Dolindo’s niece and author of “Gesù, Pensaci Tu!”, encourages people to pray the Rosary of Abandonment and the Surrender Novena together, because there are special graces in praying the two together. One example of these graces is the story of Patrick, who experienced a miraculous healing after praying the Rosary of Abandonment and the entire Surrender Novena all in one day. If you would like a prayer card that contains both prayers together in one place, I highly recommend this beautiful brand new one from my friends at Catholic to the Max.
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Special thanks to Maria Palma Smith for the use of her English translation of the book Amore, Dolindo, Dolore (Casa Mariana Editrice “Apostolato Stampa”, 2001). Publication of the English translation is forthcoming from Academy of the Immaculate Publishing.