An Advent Calendar for my Friends – December 2

TROGER, Paul: Christ Comforted by an Angel, c. 1730;
Oil on canvas; Museo Diocesano, Bressanone

The Angel of Self-Surrender

by Anselm Grün

To surrender yourself sounds very passive and resigned at first. Who is not able to actively shape their lives and cope, has to surrender to fate. They give up. But that is certainly not the attitude the Angel of Self-Surrender wants to lead us to. He intends something else. Self-surrender means getting into something first. Who “gets into” life accepts life and its motions. They aren’t keeping anything back. They don’t freeze up, but surrender themselves to the flow of life. That way something can flower in them and become alive.

Self-surrender is the opposite of clinging. Many people cling to their self-images, others cling to their habits or their possessions, their fame, their success. The Angel of Self-Surrender wants to introduce you to the art of letting go of yourself, of surrendering to life, and ultimately, to God. I can only surrender myself if I have faith that I will not be treated arbitrarily, but that there is an angel who means well. Who surrenders to their angel will be free of the unnecessary worries that many agonise about today. They will be free from obsessing about themselves and their health, about adequate appreciation of themselves and their success. The attitude of self-surrender encompasses not only faith, but it also holds great inner freedom. If I don’t have to do everything on my own, if I surrender myself to God, trusting that He will take care of me, then I will be free of being self-directed and self-centred.

The Angel of Self-Surrender also wants to introduce you to having the faith to surrender yourself to another person. Many friendships and marriages shatter today, because everyone is only concerned with themselves, because everyone is afraid of surrendering themselves to someone else. It is the fear of losing their freedom, that the other person could do with us what they would, that we would be at the mercy of their arbitrariness and malice. But without self-surrender no relationship can work. Because then everyone will only look fearfully to keeping their emotions in check, as well as their words and their actions, and in any case not to give themselves to the other person. But that way no trust can grow, that way the other person cannot show that they would treat us well, that they would not abuse our trust. Self-surrender does not mean to give myself up. I can only surrender myself if I am in touch with myself, if I know who I am. But at the same time self-surrender always implies risk. I leave the safety granted by always clinging to myself when I surrender myself to someone else. This can only work if I know that the other person is not a devil, but an angel who will pick me up and carry me, who means well.

I know many people who think they have to do everything themselves. That they have to work hard on their personalities to get on and to fulfil their dreams. They try to do what’s good. But one day they reach a point where they realize that they cannot get everything they want. They can have any number of good intentions. They will never be able to live up to them. Again and again they are confronted with their own inadequate reality. I have to open my arms and surrender to the angel sent to me by God so that my life may succeed. That is not an attitude of resignation, but of freedom. I feel that I don’t have to achieve everything what I want, because this is in the end only an expression of my personal ambition, but not the will of God. When I sit down in meditation before God and I turn to Him with my empty hands, then I feel this freedom of self-surrender. I know that He holds me, that I may be in His good hands just the way I am. This is what lies at the core of the Christian faith: the experience of freedom, the freedom Christ has prepared for us.

(Gal 5, 1: “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.”)

© by Anselm Grün, 50 Engel für das Jahr, 1997;
translation by JunoMagic

Song for December 2:

(Click pic!)

“Windgesang aus dem Westen”
(“Windsong out of the West”)
by Hans-Jürgen Hufeisen,
album “Pegasus – Melodien der Vier Winde” (“Pegasus –  Melodies of the Four Winds”)