Love and Trust

Consider four situations in which you might exercise trust. First, it’s very risky to entrust your life savings to a person who hates you. Second, it’s less risky but still quite chancy to entrust your life savings to a stranger who neither loves nor hates you. Third, there is no risk in entrusting your money to a noble, virtuous person who loves you with the deepest heartfelt love and has frequently gifted you generously. And fourth, if the love between you and that treasured person is mutual, then the trust is optimal, and that person, with his or her quality of trustworthiness, is precious to you. Why? Because trust is coterminous with love.

Now, tighten your seat belt and ponder with me, if you will, step by step, this deep scriptural truth about love-fostered trust; you’ll soon understand why it’s a major “shortcut to holiness.” Let us start with the awesome fact that our good, kind, and merciful God loves each of us with an infinite and endless love. “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving kindness” (Jer 31:3) . . . “with cords of kindness, with ties of love” (Hos 11:4). Simply look devoutly at a crucifix, as Paul suggests (see Gal 3:1), and ask yourself what besides love could motivate someone to choose such a torturous death for another. “Greater love has no one than this” (Jn 15:13).

Thus we see no problem or limit on God’s part of the equation. But what about our part? It’s up to us to make the love between Creator and creature fully mutual, as stipulated by the famous law of reciprocity, first formulated by the “apostle of love”: “We love God because he first loved us,” (Jn 4:19). Yet, to attain the kind of trust described in the fourth situation above, we must love back as fully as possible, so as not to leave his yearning for love unrequited: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Dt 6:5, emphasis mine). “The Lord delights in those . . . who put their trust in his unfailing love” (Ps 147:11). Jesus reminds us that only this mutual love will lead to the mystical insights by which he will reveal himself to us (see Jn 14:20-21).

However, the question still remains: how does this mutual love relate to the virtue of trust? David articulated the answer as a prayer in Psalm 86:2-5 (emphasis added): “I am devoted to you; save your servant who trusts in you. You are my God; be gracious to me, O Lord. . . . You, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call on you.” In our love-response, our trust in God is equal to our love for him, since it is the primary expression of our love for him.

Yet, it is John who answers this question about trust most incisively, including within his answer a reminder that authentic trust presupposes a lived love that soars beyond mere words: “Whoever lives in love, lives in God and God in him. In this way [mutual] love is made complete among us so that we will have trust” (1 Jn 4:16-17, emphasis mine). It is this giving-receiving love that engenders in the soul a full-blossomed trust in God. That trust is so deep that the soul embraces God’s will just as easily in his “no” as in his “yes” in answer to prayers of petition. In that stage of trust, the soul bounds like a gazelle among the peaks of holiness.

This excerpt is from the book Pathways of Trust, by John H. Hampsch,C.M.F., originally published by Servant Publications. It and other of Fr. Hampsch's books and tapes can be purchased from Claretian Teaching Ministry, 20610 Manhattan Pl, #120, Torrance, CA 90501-1863. Phone 1-310-782-6408.