Day 4: Close your eyes and surrender

On the fourth day of the Surrender Novena, Don Dolindo gives us a practical instruction for the moment when anxiety returns: close your eyes and pray the refrain. Today's meditation is a gift to the soul that has begun the novena and now experiences, between scheduled prayer times, the resurgence of the burden it had laid down.

Today's meditation

"When you see things getting complicated, say with closed eyes: O Jesus, I surrender myself to You. Stop worrying and look at Me, and you will see that I will do everything in My time. You will receive everything you need at the time you need it. I lift up your suffering, in the measure that you put it in My hands."

The instruction with closed eyes is significant. It is not a closing off from reality but a closing off from the agitation of the sense memory and the racing imagination. The closed eyes are the same closed eyes the Lord Himself describes when He instructs the disciples "go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret" (Matthew 6:6). Surrender requires a brief interior cell where the soul can hand the matter to Jesus undistracted.

The act of surrender

When the anxiety returns to you today, anywhere, at any hour, pause where you are. Close your eyes for a moment. Say:

O Jesus, I surrender myself to You, take care of everything.

Once is enough in the moment. Continue your day. At your scheduled time of novena prayer, repeat the refrain ten times in the ordered way.

Reflection

The fourth day's instruction is, in effect, a method for sanctifying the work of the day. The novena is not nine isolated half-hours of prayer; it is nine days of training the soul in a habit. Don Dolindo gives a tool ("close your eyes and say") that turns every recurrence of the anxiety into a small renewal of the surrender already made.

The phrase I will do everything in My time is also worth pausing over. Surrender does not mean Jesus will resolve the matter on the timeline I would prefer. It means He will resolve it on the timeline that is best, which is His timeline, not mine. "For the vision is yet for the appointed time; it hastens to the end, it will not lie. If it seem slow, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay" (Habakkuk 2:3). The patience of the soul over the nine days is itself the deepening of the surrender.

The closing line, I lift up your suffering, in the measure that you put it in My hands, makes the participation explicit. The Lord Jesus does not coerce the soul into freedom from its anxiety; He waits for the soul to actually hand Him the burden. The hand-off is the prayer.

Closing prayers

Conclude with the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be, then the Marian closing:

Mother, I am Yours now and forever. Through You and with You I always want to belong completely to Jesus.

Tomorrow we cross the midpoint of the novena with Day 5: close your eyes and let Me work. Notice today how often the anxiety returns; the noticing itself is the first half of the medicine.