ps, this is a rather old article I never intended to publish, but now I'm releasing it.

It would be impossible to live our lives without trust. All of us put our trust in something or someone, and of course, there are some people, sadly, who find it very difficult to trust other people. But it's very easy for us to convince ourselves that we trust God. Very easy because we can have thoughts about God. The idea of God can be comforting and can be something of a crutch in our lives. We have very strong feelings about God, but strong feelings are not the same as trusting in God.

We discover how much we truly trust God when things go wrong, when we suffer, when we are touched by the chaos of losing control. And we discover really how much we trust in ourselves, our own sense of control of life. So, God will sometimes allow us these moments of suffering to bring us to our senses because to trust God, we must recognize that our whole lives are in His hands, that we are not in control. Our whole lives, even those moments of pain, fear, real suffering, because we are called to carry our cross. Without the cross, there can be no resurrection, there can be no salvation.

This is why Christ, in the Beatitudes, says, "Blessed are those who mourn," No, not the rich people who lose a few million euros and perhaps mourn over their financial loss, but those who mourn for their sins. As the psalmist David said, shedding tears from the very morning, from the beginning of the day, grieving over his sins. We are called to repent, to be released from what shackles us. We remember the paralytic who was lowered to be healed by Christ, and Christ forgave him his sins. His paralysis brought him to Christ, and he was able to find salvation. So, we may be paralyzed by our sins, by our passions. We must shake them off. Christ's instruction to that man was, "Take up your bed and walk." He calls us to be active, take up our bed and walk, to repent, to do something, not to lie in our bed and fester in our sin.

We remember that two men died beside Christ. One continued to curse and abuse Christ while the other recognized the justice of his own suffering. He recognized his own sin. We remember both men died on the cross, both men, but Christ promised the one that that very day he would be in paradise with Christ. In recognizing his sin and repenting, he still had to die on the cross. We must not be led astray by false heretical versions of Christianity which promise the superficial instant fix. It is a process, a painful process, a process of self-reflection, a process of taking up a cross, of recognizing a sin, of mourning inwardly over the passions that we have allowed to develop their warning. Accepting the forgiveness of God, the healing of God, the change that He brings to us so that our mourning may become joy.