Salesian Literature

Chapter 4:  God’s supernatural providence in regard to rational creatures

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​The salvation of angels and of men – that was the intention behind the whole of God’s creative activity.
 
From all eternity God knew that he could make a great number of creatures past all counting, endowed with different perfections, different characteristics, to which he could give himself.  Realizing that he could give himself in no better fashion than by uniting himself with a created nature – in such a way as to engraft the creature into the godhead, so as to form one person – his infinite goodness, naturally self-sharing, decided on that method.
 
In God, the divine nature is eternally shared – the Father sharing the whole of his infinite indivisible godhead with the Son in begetting him; Father and Son together sharing their own unique godhead with the Holy Spirit who proceeds from them.  Similarly, that supreme loving kindness could be shared so perfectly with a creature outside itself that the created nature and the godhead, each retaining its characteristic qualities, would be so intimately united as to form a single person.
 
Now of all possible creatures which God, in his almighty power, could produce, his choice fell upon the humanity which he intended later on to be united with the person of God the Son.  He destined it for this peerless honour of personal union with his divine Majesty, so that it might enjoy pre-eminently, for all eternity, the treasures of his infinite glory.
 
After choosing the sacred humanity of our Saviour for this felicity, supreme providence arranged that the sharing of his goodness should not be limited to the person of his beloved Son; he planned to pour it out, in his benevolence, on many other creatures.  From the mass of innumerable possible things, he decided to create men and angels as companions for his Son, to share his graces, his glory, to adore and praise him for ever.
 
He also clearly foresaw that the first man would abuse his freedom, would give up grace, and so forfeit glory.  However, in order that the gentleness of his mercy should be graced by the beauty of his justice, he resolved to save mankind by means of strict redemption.  As this could be fully achieved only by his own Son, he appointed him to ransom mankind – not merely by one loving act, which would have been more than sufficient to ransom a million million worlds; but, moreover, by the innumerable loving actions of all that he would do and suffer, which brought him to death, death on a cross (Phil. 2:8).  Doomed to die; for he was to be our companion in misfortune, so as to make us one day his companions in glory – meaning in this way to display how rich is that abundant kindness of his (Rom. 2:4; 9:23) through such an abundant, plentiful, overflowing, lavish and excessive redemption (cf. Ps. 129:7).
 
It would pay our purchase price, it would win back for us all we need to reach heaven, so that no one should ever have complaint on the grounds that God’s mercy is withheld from any man.

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