An Answer, Finally, to Jesus' Call to Trust

Jane and Sonny Calapai of Yorktown Heights, NY, are frequent visitors to the National Shrine of The Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, MA. Jane shares how she has learned to follow Jesus' call to surrender in trust to Him:

One of my major struggles has been to trust in God and put everything in God's hands. I'm an alpha personality, I guess you'd call it. I need to control things.

We've had a lot of challenges in our family. Sonny has to live in New Jersey because his job moved out there. His mother has Alzheimer's. My parents' health is failing. We have teenage kids.

Until recently, whenever a crisis arose, I always would think, "I'll fix it," instead of giving it to God. Or I would give it to God, but then quickly take it back and try to fix everything myself.

I've been interested in The Divine Mercy message for about 15 years, and, of course, trust is so fundamental to the message. And here I was constantly struggling with trust.

Then, in December, I got cancer, and everything changed. When I was in the hospital, all I did was pray. My husband would come in and say, "I can't believe how calm you are." It was because I was in constant prayer. I was surrendering to Him in trust - finally. I told God that if it was my time to die, fine, but that I felt that He had work for me to do here.

Now I'm cured, thanks to God. I feel like God is taking caring of me.

The illness was a life-changing experience. I had been working a lot. I had my own accounting company. But, when I came out of the hospital, I decided not to go back to work. We don't need the money, but I would have never believed that before I became ill.

So now I have all this time. I have always wanted to work with therapy dogs, but I always would say, "Someday." Well, I finally realized that "someday" is "today." I have the puppy now. We're training him so that I can take him to hospitals and nursing homes to help sick people who are feeling lonely, depressed, and withdrawn.

Sonny will tell you, I'm much calmer these days. For instance, just before we left for Mercy Sunday Weekend, the puppy chewed up the rug. I was like, "I don't care." He's going to be a therapy dog. He's going to bring so much happiness to children in cancer units and dialysis wards.

So he can eat the rug.

Trust, that's the thing.

You might also like...

The world may think that Christmas ended at midnight on Christmas Day, but the Church knows better. We celebrate an eight-day Christmas Octave, stretching from Dec. 25 to Jan. 1, with a number of special feast days, including three feasts of martyrs:

On Oct. 28, the Church celebrates the Feast Day of Sts. Simon and Jude, apostles of the Lord who zealously preached to the nations. Father Dan Cambra, MIC, tells their story.

Eight missionaries, sent to proclaim the Gospel to the Huron people in North America, suffered terrible martyrdom at the hands of the Iroquois. We celebrate them on Oct. 19. Here, in brief, is the story of St. John de Brebeuf, St. Isaac Jogues, and their companions.