What can I do to help my neighbours? What tasks can I perform? What is it that God wants me to do? What should I be praying about? How much time can I spend praying? When should I change prayer intentions?

If we care about our neighbours, we’ve all had days like this. It is not an entirely bad thing. It’s not entirely bad; but it is far from perfect. The reality is that, if we have time and mental power to be agonizing over things like this, then we still are not suffering and totally abandoned to Jesus in that part of our life; we are still in control. It isn’t all bad. But it isn’t all good, either.

I can hardly imagine a saint who agonized over the next thing to do more than Blessed Charles de Foucauld did. Yet, in a more mature letter, Brother Charles wrote,

It is when we are reduced to nothing that we have the most powerful means of uniting ourselves to Jesus and of doing good for souls. It is what Saint John of the Cross repeats at nearly every line. When we are able to suffer and love, we are doing a great deal, the most that someone can do in this world.

One clear application of this to Brother Charles’ own life is his agonizing and anxiety over what to do next. It is a bit of suffering to agonize. It is more suffering to not even have the mental space and leisure in which to agonize…!

In other words, we have no clue where we’re most useful. None at all. We’re out of the loop. God knows. Only when we are annihilated, even in our own knowledge of our usefulness and extent and power and plans, do we do we become useful. The Cross is a powerful means of union with God and with our neighbours: the Cross carried into everything, everything about us.