A Divine Look at Anxiety

Anxiety is a debilitating condition. The texts today from the Roman Catholic Lectionary offer us a look at our anxiety from a position of relationship with God. Friar Jude Winkler tells us that the passage from the Prophet Isaiah comes from the Babylonian exile when the Jewish people questioned whether they had been forgotten by God. The author of this text uses the image of God as nursing mother to convey how closely God is connected to our daily needs in our relationship with the Divine. The actions of the Apostle Paul which are recorded in the Christian Testament are clearly those of a faithful servant to the commission of Jesus to bring the Good News to all. Paul prepared and acted with both prudence and under the guidance of Providence. He tells the Corinthians that he must leave the judgment of his actions to God. One source of our anxiety is the judgment of our actions by others and by God. We become anxious over rejection, criticism, our reputation, legacy and pride. We are concerned that we may be discovered to be negligent, a fraud or a sinner. The application of the proclamation by Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew that we cannot serve two masters may be a key to addressing some of the anxiety over our actions. When we respond to the invitation to be servant of the Will of God and seek out the humility, sincerity, wisdom, patience and perseverance which is antidote to anxiety, we rest in the peace experienced by Dan Clendenin and practice the discipline of St Ignatius, cited by Andy Alexander, S.J. ofCreighton University, that we should therefore use those things which help us achieve the end for which we are created and that we should shun those things which get in the way of our fulfilling our purpose.