Day One | The Peace of Surrender

“He who avoids prayer is avoiding everything that is good.”
– Saint John of the Cross

Why do you confuse yourselves by worrying? Leave the care of your affairs to me and everything will be peaceful. I say to you in truth that every act of true, blind, complete surrender to me produces the effect that you desire and resolves all difficult situations.
O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything! (10 times)

A Carmelite Reflection
Worry scatters the soul; surrender gathers it back into God. St. John of the Cross teaches that the soul finds peace only when it stops grasping and allows itself to be led into the quiet center of our souls, where God dwells. This indwelling of the soul is at the core of Carmelite Spirituality. Today, the first prayer in our novena invites us to “leave the care of your affairs to Me.” This is an invitation from our Lord to this interior stillness. To let down our need to manage outcomes. Then, God will gently lift us beyond fear into His own steady peace.

Day Two | Closing the Eyes of the Soul

“Abide in peace, banish cares, take no account of all that happens, and you will serve God according to His good pleasure and rest in Him.”
– Saint John of the Cross

Surrender to me does not mean to fret, to be upset, or to lose hope, nor does it mean offering to me a worried prayer asking me to follow you and change your worry into prayer. It is against this surrender, deeply against it, to worry, to be nervous and to desire to think about the consequences of anything.

It is like the confusion that children feel when they ask their mother to see to their needs, and then try to take care of those needs for themselves so that their childlike efforts get in their mother’s way. Surrender means to placidly close the eyes of the soul, to turn away from thoughts of tribulation and to put yourself in my care, so that only I act, saying, “You take care of it.”
O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything! (10 times)

A Carmelite Reflection
Christ asks us not only to stop worrying, but to “close the eyes of the soul” in surrender, so that He alone can act in us. John of the Cross spoke of the “night of faith”—this isn’t a darkness of despair but of trust, where the soul no longer depends on its own understanding, and where we can blindly rest in God. Like a child resting in its mother’s arms, we relinquish our need to calculate and control. Real surrender is peaceful, unclenched, silent.

Day Three | Letting God be God

“The soul that is attached to anything, however much good there may be in it,
will not arrive at the liberty of divine union.”
 – St. John of the Cross

How many things I do when the soul, in so much spiritual and material need, turns to me, looks at me and says to me, “You take care of it,” then closes its eyes and rests. In pain you pray for me to act, but that I act in the way you want. You do not turn to me, instead, you want me to adapt to your ideas. You are not sick people who ask the doctor to cure you, but rather sick people who tell the doctor how to. So do not act this way, but pray as I taught you in the Our Father: “Hallowed be thy Name,” that is, be glorified in my need. “Thy kingdom come,” that is, let all that is in us and in the world be in accord with your kingdom. “Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven,” that is, in our need, decide as you see fit for our temporal and eternal life. If you say to me truly: “Thy will be done,” which is the same as saying: “You take care of it,” I will intervene with all my omnipotence, and I will resolve the most difficult situations.
O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything! (10 times)

A Carmelite Reflection
Jesus knows us so well. He know that we want to dictate how He should act. Today, He invites us to a deeper surrender that allows Him to intervene in all our situations, according to His omnipotence. John of the Cross warns that our attachment to our own ideas, our own will, blocks God’s work in the soul. When we pray the Our Father in truth, saying “thy will be done”, we are asking God to bring His wisdom into our own near-sightedness. He waits for our permission to allow Him to shape both our present need and our eternal destiny – what an incredible thought! He who is all-powerful waits for us to surrender. And this surrender becomes the doorway through which divine omnipotence approaches and transforms our weakness.

Day Four | Trusting When Things Are Getting Worse

“Oh, night more lovely than the dawn! Oh, night that has united the Lover with his beloved!”
 – St. John of the Cross

You see evil growing instead of weakening? Do not worry. Close your eyes and say to me with faith: “Thy will be done, You take care of it.” I say to you that I will take care of it, and that I will intervene as does a doctor and I will accomplish miracles when they are needed. Do you see that the sick person is getting worse? Do not be upset, but close your eyes and say, “You take care of it.” I say to you that I will take care of it, and that there is no medicine more powerful than my loving intervention. By my love, I promise this to you.
O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything! (10 times)

A Carmelite Reflection
St. John of the Cross used darkness and night as the allegory for the spiritual life, because we often can’t see or sense where we are on the journey of faith. Our feelings are not the gauge of how well we are doing, and only God knows the truth. Sometimes, when things seem to us to be out of control or in decline, God’s perspective is very different. St. John knew that God works most powerfully when our senses can’t perceive His actions, and that sometimes God deepens the night so that the dawn may be purer and more complete. When Jesus tells us to trust even as sickness worsens or evil seems to grow, He is inviting us to believe that His loving intervention is already at work beneath what we see.

Day Five | Being Carried by God

“Live in faith and hope, though it be in darkness, for in this darkness God protects the soul.”
 – St. John of the Cross

And when I must lead you on a path different from the one you see, I will prepare you; I will carry you in my arms; I will let you find yourself, like children who have fallen asleep in their mother’s arms, on the other bank of the river. What troubles you and hurts you immensely are your reason, your thoughts and worry, and your desire at all costs to deal with what afflicts you.
O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything! (10 times)

A Carmelite Reflection
Jesus promises to carry us like sleeping children, bringing us quietly to the “other bank.” This is the very movement John of the Cross describes: the soul is lifted and transported by God, not through its own strength but through loving passivity. Worry and anxiety weigh us down; but when we surrender, we allow God to carry us in security.

Day Six | What We Need Most

“What we need most… is to be silent before this great God with our appetite and with our tongue, for the language He best hears is silent love.”
 – St. John of the Cross

You are sleepless; you want to judge everything, direct everything and see to everything and you surrender to human strength, or worse—to men themselves, trusting in their intervention—this is what hinders my words and my views. Oh, how much I wish from you this surrender, to help you; and how I suffer when I see you so agitated! Satan tries to do exactly this: to agitate you and to remove you from my protection and to throw you into the jaws of human initiative. So, trust only in me, rest in me, surrender to me in everything.
O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything! (10 times)

A Carmelite Reflection
Agitation, John of the Cross teaches, feeds the ego and fractures the soul’s capacity to receive divine wisdom. Jesus warns us not to fall into this trap—of judging, directing, and relying on human solutions. Satan seeks to stir turmoil within us at all costs, because he knows that this lack of peace can block God’s grace. But when we surrender to God, He anchors us again in the stillness where God’s voice is clear. Rest is not passivity; it is an act of profound trust.

Day Seven | Miracles Proportional to Surrender

“The more a soul is stripped of self, the more admirably is it clothed with God.”
 – St. John of the Cross

I perform miracles in proportion to your full surrender to me and to your not thinking of yourselves. I sow treasure troves of graces when you are in the deepest poverty. No person of reason, no thinker, has ever performed miracles, not even among the saints. He does divine works whosoever surrenders to God. So don’t think about it any more, because your mind is acute and for you it is very hard to see evil and to trust in me and to not think of yourself. Do this for all your needs, do this, all of you, and you will see great continual silent miracles. I will take care of things, I promise this to you.
O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything! (10 times)

A Carmelite Reflection
In today’s novena prayer, Jesus reveals a spiritual law that John of the Cross knew well: the less we rely on ourselves, the more space God has to act. Miracles are God’s work, not ours – so they happen when we know how poor we truly are. This poverty of spirit, which is knowing how poor we truly are, is the opposite of self-sufficiency. The soul that stops thinking about itself becomes an open vessel for divine works, for God’s purification, to be transformed in love.

Day Eight | Carried on the Current of Grace

“The soul that walks in love neither tires others nor grows tired.”
 – St. John of the Cross

Close your eyes and let yourself be carried away on the flowing current of my grace; close your eyes and do not think of the present, turning your thoughts away from the future just as you would from temptation. Repose in me, believing in my goodness, and I promise you by my love that if you say, “You take care of it,” I will take care of it all; I will console you, liberate you and guide you.
O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything! (10 times)

A Carmelite Reflection
To “close your eyes and let yourself be carried away” is to live under the impulse of love, given over to the Beloved. This current of grace is infinitely stronger than fear, stronger than any anxieties for the future we cannot see. St. John of the Cross knew this current of grace infinitely. He knew that the inflow of God’s grace in the soul – contemplative prayer – is the way the soul grows in love, ascending to God by love, more and more moved by God rather than by its own striving. Here, surrender becomes joyful abandonment to grace.

Day Nine | The Power of Surrender

“The road is narrow. He who wishes to travel it more easily must cast off all things and use the cross as his cane. In other words, he must be truly resolved to suffer willingly for the love of God in all things.”
 – Saint John of the Cross

Pray always in readiness to surrender, and you will receive from it great peace and great rewards, even when I confer on you the grace of immolation, of repentance, and of love. Then what does suffering matter? It seems impossible to you? Close your eyes and say with all your soul, “Jesus, you take care of it.” Do not be afraid, I will take care of things and you will bless my name by humbling yourself. A thousand prayers cannot equal one single act of surrender, remember this well. There is no novena more effective than this.
O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything! (10 times)

A Carmelite Reflection
The fruit of full surrender is peace. Even in suffering, for when we are living in love of God, even our suffering becomes an offering that unites us to Christ. John of the Cross teaches that immolation in love is not destruction but transformation—the soul becoming wholly God’s. One act of surrender, Jesus says, outweighs a thousand prayers; one act of loving abandonment outweighs a thousand efforts.