By Fr. Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D.
“I give up, Lord. You take care of it.” Sometimes life gets out of control. No matter how hard we try to obviate freefall or to figure ourselves out, life’s circumstances seem to get the better of us.
It is at these moments that I recommend the above prayer, which I have put to great use throughout my life. I recall my discovery of this prayer in Rome back in 1980. I had been sent to the Gregorian University to take all of my theology classes in Italian. I went to Italy two months early without any background in Italian to attain “fluency”.
I was not able to understand 25 percent of what he was saying and began to panic. I kept thinking to myself (in my unqualified ignorance) that I was going to “go down”. What would I say to my Provincial? To my classmates? “Here I am, back in the United States. I couldn’t understand anything and I flunked out.” Needless to say, I began to feel considerable discomfort.
Realizing that circumstances were quite out of my control, I muttered, “I give up, Lord. You take care of it!” When I said this it seemed like steam came out of my ears. A pressure was relieved by simply giving it over to the Lord, Who could providentially bring some good out of my predicament.
As a matter of fact, He did. The moment this prayer enabled me to calm down, I became content with understanding partial sentences and concepts. I could then begin to make sense out of the general line of thought which, in turn, built my confidence and thus enabled me to understand more.