Don Dolindo on the Psalm of Trustful Surrender

In this beautiful commentary on Psalm 90(91), Don Dolindo Ruotolo unveils the depths of divine protection and the power of unwavering trust in God. His insights resonate deeply with the essence of his renowned Surrender Novena, inviting readers to abandon themselves completely to God’s care.

Let us immerse ourselves in Don Dolindo’s profound meditation on this psalm of trust:

“This Psalm was composed by David on the occasion of some public calamity. It is an act of trust in God, and an assurance given by the Lord Himself to those who trust in Him. For those of us who recite it, this psalm is a beautiful prayer that strengthens our trust in God—the foundation and essence of our entire life. If we truly grasped how beneficial it is to place all our hope in the Lord, we would eagerly embrace the various trials that each day brings, using them as opportunities to renew our surrender to our Heavenly Father. Indeed, humanity’s greatest misfortune lies in our failure to entrust God with all our worries and needs.

The Prophet begins the Psalm by noting that he who dwells under divine assistance, dwells in the protection of the God of Heaven, that is, of the Almighty who can comfort us in every tribulation. It is not enough to have trust in the Lord, one must dwell under His assistance, abandon oneself to Him and make hope like the habit of our life. This absolutely excludes any uncertainty in divine protection, and any exaggerated trust in men or in natural means. We painfully trust in God always up to a certain point; we do not know how to put in His hands our every need, and above all we do not know how to wait for His moments.

Therefore, the Psalmist determines who truly dwells under God’s assistance: it is he who says to Him with true heart: You are my defender and my refuge, You my God in whom I trust. My defender, trusting in Him in assaults; my refuge, taking shelter in Him in dangers, the sole end of all trust, which gives the soul rest and security in every anguish.

Having established the nature of true trust in God, the Psalmist shows its beneficial effects, so that the soul may increasingly understand that God alone is her only hope. […]

His faithfulness, that is, the certainty of His keeping His promises, is like a shield in life’s uncertainties, especially those of tomorrow. The soul, confident in God, is not frightened by the terrors of infernal darkness, nor does she fear the assaults that come to her by day from men, nor diseases, nor public scourges and devastations of the enemy. The soul feels secure as if she were fully armed; when attacked, she sees herself miraculously freed as if a powerful sword made a thousand and ten thousand of her adversaries fall, without them being able to approach her and harm her […].

Therefore, the Psalmist summarizes the divine protection of one who trusts, in a single word that expresses everything: You have chosen the Most High as your refuge saying: You, O Lord, are my hope; you cannot desire more, you cannot obtain more, because He is the Almighty. Evil will not be able to come upon you, and the scourge will not approach your dwelling, because the Lord guards you with a particular providence through the Guardian Angels, who lovingly carry you in their hands, so that you do not stumble, they render harmless for you the snares of death, and you dominate brutal force and malignant incursions, like one who walks, without receiving harm, on the fierce lion and the poisonous serpent.

The song of trust closes with a powerful word that confirms its effectiveness; it is God Himself who speaks solemnly from verse 14 to the end of the Psalm, making formal promises to those who trust in Him. […] The Lord will deliver those who hope in Him, not with an uncertain or fleeting hope, but full and secure; therefore He says: Because he hoped in Me, I will deliver him. God delivers those who have hoped in Him, who have already abandoned themselves entirely to Him. The Lord will protect those who truly believe in Him, and who honor Him with a holy life: I will protect him, because he has recognized My name. When the soul hopes and is faithful to God, then He will hear her in her prayers, assist her in tribulations, save her from all evil, glorify her if humiliated, satisfy her with a long life and save her eternally.

Who can, after these promises, hesitate to place all his hope in God? Who can still anguish in worries, knowing in whose omnipotent hands he entrusts himself? Satan tempts us mainly to make us lose trust in God; all his malignant activity aims at this, since he knows that if he shakes us in hope he has conquered us. When he tempted Jesus Christ in the desert, he tempted Him on trust, and therefore distorted the meaning of this Psalm, quoting it in his own way (Matt. 4:6), so that the Redeemer would have trusted not in God but in His own power.

Satan would have wanted Jesus Christ to have performed a miracle to obtain food, to have trusted in His own power to obtain glory, and to have trusted in him, infernal spirit, worshiping him to obtain the kingdom; he wanted to exclude from the Redeemer’s life trust in Providence, hope in divine promises and abandonment in God. This is what Satan still does with us, and he tempts us by making us hope not in God’s intervention, but in the effectiveness of our own and others’ activities, and with some souls, even in proposing himself as the object of hope and help.

Nothing frightens Satan more than trust in God, full trust, and we would say blind trust, which does not even make us think about the means by which God can save us, but makes us place all our confidence in Him, and makes us rest in divine protection. Let us therefore close our eyes and abandon ourselves to the Lord. […]

When Jesus Christ was nailed to the Cross, the crowd mocked Him for His great trust in the Father: He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now. […] These two circumstances make us understand that the Psalm that speaks of trust must prophetically refer to Him who wanted to give us the full and unlimited example of it, and who placed it as the foundation of the Church saying: Take courage, I have overcome the world. […]

Jesus Christ trusted in the Father as the only defense and only refuge, because in His Passion He was abandoned by all, and found no escape in the unjust sentence that condemned Him to death. He seemed defeated, but in reality, by dying, He was freed from the snare of contradictions with which His work was threatened, and His body was released from the bonds of mortality by rising to immortal life. […] He lived entrusting Himself to the Father, died taking refuge in God His Father, and the faithfulness of divine promises was the shield that covered His work, His Church.

The Fathers apply to the Church the verses that follow in the Psalm, and the application is beautiful, since Jesus Christ has done everything for her, and everything that refers to Him refers to His Bride the Church. The Church, because of God’s faithfulness in the promises made to her, does not fear the terrors of the night of persecutions, nor the arrow that flies by day, in the battles waged against her under the aspect of the false light of progress, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness of errors, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday in the persecution of the antichrist. […]

Trust in God forms the essence of the Church’s existence. Though vulnerable in the world, she traverses it like a warm, tranquil current flowing through an icy, turbulent sea. Trust is true humility, because it is the recognition of one’s own insufficiency. Trust is not an agitated and arid recognition, because it is fruitful of the greatest union with God. Trust is true faith, because it is the practical recognition of God, and it is living love because it is an intimate and filial relationship with Him. Trust destroys all obstacles, resolves all difficulties, calms all storms, because it makes the soul strong in her Creator. Trust is the door of grace and is the key to miracles, since through it God intervenes as master in human affairs. […] Whoever is a child of the Church cannot follow another path, and as has been said, must seize all occasions to renew trust in God, and make it the daily exercise of one’s own piety.”

To conclude our reflection on Don Dolindo’s commentary on Psalm 90(91), let us pray an excerpt from his paraphrased prayer of this psalm:

You are my hope, O Lord, You my shelter in distress; my trust in You is not in vain, for You remove all evil from me, and do not allow the scourges I deserve for my sins to strike me. You are infinite goodness, and You have ordered Your Angels to guard me in all my ways, so that I do not stumble in life’s difficulties and do not go to ruin. Trusting in You, my God, I will dominate every opposing force, every snare of death, every danger and every evil. You are my deliverance and my protection, because I love and adore You alone. I cry out to You and You hear me, I turn to You and You save me, I confide my humiliations to You and You glorify me in justice and truth. You satisfy me with good things, O my Lord, You save me in time and in eternity. You are everything to me, in You I trust.

Author’s Note: If you would like to read more about Don Dolindo’s spirituality, check out this book: Don Dolindo’s Spiritual Guidance.

Photo by Liza Zhukovska on Unsplash

Ruotolo, D. D. (1939). Commento alla Sacra Scrittura. Apostolato Stampa, 33.