Salesian Literature

Chapter 8  :  An appeal for loving submission to whatever providence decrees

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Our human minds are incapable of fathoming the motives behind God’s will – at least, until we see him face to face, whose sweep is from world’s end to world’s end, whose gracious ordering manifests itself everywhere (cf. Wis. 8:1).  All that he does is done in exact measure, all is nicely calculated and weighed (cf. Wis. 11:21).  What diversity, Lord in thy creatures! sang the psalmist: what wisdom has designed them all! (Ps. 103:24).

 

Nothing is commoner than to be unaware of how or why even our fellow-men do things.  “Unskilled we,” says the saintly Bishop of Nazianzus, “but the craftsman knows what he is about; so there is nothing haphazard of slipshod about the world’s fashioning, little though we know of how it works.”

 

Indians, we are told, will stand round a clock all day long to hear it chime the hours at exactly the right moment.  How it is done, they cannot guess; they know it is not by accident – so clockmakers they hold in reverent awe as supermen.

 

That is exactly how we look at the world around us, human nature particularly – a huge conglomeration of activity and movement that never fails to amaze us.  We know that, taken together, the many different parts serve to move the holy hands of God’s justice or to chime the triumphant praise of his merciful loving kindness; but the separate function of each piece, its contribution to the common purpose, the reason for its fashioning – that we cannot understand, unless the supreme craftsman shows us.  If he does not reveal the secrets of his art, it is simply to increase our wonder, our reverence, until we come to heaven where he can delight us with the sweetness of his wisdom and, in the fullness of his love, lay bare the reasons for everything that happened in this world – the ways and means that wrought our eternal salvation.

 

Let me quote the great Nazianzen once more:

 

Our trouble is not unlike giddiness. To sufferers from that complaint it seems as though everything around them is topsy-turvy, when all that is really upset is their brain or imagination.  And it often seems to us – when we are ignorant of the cause of things that happen – that this world is governed to no purpose, because we are unaware of it.

 

In everything that happens this must be the ejaculation rising from our loving hearts to the eternal Father’s all-wise, all-powerful and all-kind providence: How deep is the mine of God’s wisdom, of his knowledge! So extravagant, the wealth of God’s goodness; his love for us, a mystery beyond all fathoming!  That is why he has provided a rich profusion of ways – enough, and more than enough – to lead us to salvation.  So graciously bestowed too – his wisdom sees to that; his infinite knowledge has anticipated all that we should need.

 

What have we to fear, what limits set upon our hopes, we show are the children of a Father so unstinting in his goodness that he loves and means to save us; so skilful in his provision of all that we shall need, and so wise in its distribution; so kind in his choice, so farseeing in his arrangements, so discreet in their fulfilment?

 

Away with us, then, along the peaceful paths of charity!  It is the man who is loving God when death comes, who will enjoy the possession of love for ever in the life that follows death.

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