Mary Ward, that great 17th-century Christian educator, used to tell her sisters, “Do your best and God will help you.”

The idea that God can and wants to help us in our difficulties is an axiom of biblical faith. It distinguishes the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—the God who in Christ Jesus became compassion incarnate—from the Unmoved Mover of philosophy.

Psalm 90 begins with the verse:  “Qui habitat in adiutorio  Altissimi”, “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High”.

God’s help, says Bernardo, can be defined as a dwelling place, since it constitutes a reality that sustains us, in which we can live, move, and exist. God’s help is not occasional; it is not an emergency service we call on when a house catches fire or someone is hit by a car, as if we were calling 911.

But what about those cases where God-fearing people fall and seem to be abandoned? What about when they cry out to heaven without receiving an answer, feeling only the desolate echo of their own voice?

The biblical figure of this condition is Job, whose magnificent book can be perceived as a symphony in three movements, ranging from visceral lament over an exposure of the threat to the unexpected experience of grace.

Job does not accept his friends’ rationalizations. He refuses to believe that God is tallying his life as if it were a balance sheet. He is determined to find God present in his affliction, heroically crying out, “Who but Him can do this?”

As believers, we may think of religion as an insurance policy: assured that we can count on God’s help, we think we are safe from danger. The world seems to crumble if, and when, evil strikes. How do I cope with trials that seem senseless, that destroy my protective barriers? Is my relationship with God a form of negotiation, so that when things get tough, I am tempted to follow Job’s wife’s advice to “curse God and die”?

God can make a new and blessed world possible after tearing down the walls we thought  were  the world, walls within which we were actually suffocating.

To dwell in God’s help, as St. Bernard teaches us, does not mean to traffic in certainties. It means passing through Lament and Threat to learn to live with Grace at this new level of depth. And thus allowing others to find it.

Monsignor Erik Varden, monk of the Cistercian Order of Trappists of the Strict Observance and Bishop of Trondheim (Norway), preacher of the Lenten Spiritual Exercises for the Pope and the Roman Curia

1. First meditation
2. Second meditation
3. Third meditation
4. Fourth meditation