Step 3 of the 12 Steps:
The Surrender to Jesus Prayer

“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” Step 3, from the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

LENT AND THE JESUS SURRENDER PRAYER

This Lent I have been doing the Lent Pray 40 sessions of the Hallow App.   In the sessions, speakers talk about the surrender to Jesus message in Fr. Walter Ciszek’s book, “He Leadeth Me.”  In his book Fr. Ciszek tells of the severe hardships he experienced during imprisonment in Communist Russia.   These hardships taught him that to endure he must rely on God’s will, not his own strength.  And it was this conversion experience that enabled him to survive.

Besides Fr. Ciszek’s story, the Pray 40 sessions give other conversion experiences:  the recovery of Tammy Peterson (the wife of Jordan Peterson) from cancer and her conversion, how Sr. Berenice, reared in hardship and hunger, became one of Mother Theresa’s nuns, Mark Wahlberg’s recovery from a life of hustling and addiction.   In each story there was a surrender to the will of God, as for Jesus at Gethsemane.  So, the surrender litany of Fr. Dolingo Ruotolo, “O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything,” (10 x) is a daily prayer for the sessions.

THE SURRENDER PRAYER AND STEPS 1 TO 3 OF THE 12 STEPS

When I first heard the surrender prayer, I thought this is what Step 3 of the 12 Steps says.  As the AA slogans would put Steps 1-3:  “I can’t (Step 1);  God can (Step 2); I’ll let God do it (Step 3).”   The addict/alcoholic has to admit that he/she is powerless, that he/she can’t recover by his/her own efforts (Step 1).   They have to have faith that there is a Higher Power that can help them recover (Step 2).  And finally, they have to make a decision to turn their will over to that Higher Power, God (Step 3).   So, it’s just that simple.  And it’s just that hard to do.

In “The Soul of Sponsorship,”  the story of Bill W’s friendship with Fr. Ed Dowling, S.J., I discovered how there might have been a Catholic influence on the formation of the 12 Steps.  Bill W, the co-founder of AA, found support from his friendship with Fr. Dowling (who was not an alcoholic).   Although there was correspondence and discussion about whether Bill W would come into the Church, he never did.  Rather, Bill W was always careful in writing the “Big Book” of AA not to scare away atheists and agnostics by too heavy a use of “God.”   It was “Higher Power”  and “God, as you understand him” in all AA writings.

SURRENDER TO THE WILL OF GOD AS CATHOLIC THEOLOGY

Now “Surrender to the Will of God” is not a new theological development.   One can find references in the Old and New Testaments aplenty.  (Just do a web search “Surrender to the will of God Bible.”) More recently, an 18th Century Jesuit, Jean-Pierre de Caussade, wrote a long discourse on this: “Abandonment to Divine Providence.”    Because some objected to the work as leading to the sin of “quietism” (spiritual sloth),  there were difficulties in getting the work published.   But those objections were overcome;  the distinction between abandonment and giving up has been clearly made.

I’ll end this piece with a personal testimony.  Surrender works!

NOTE:

This article was first published on Catholic Stand, 13 March, 2024.