Have Confidence in God's Providence - Always

We Catholics must always have confidence in God's Providence. You know, trust in God. We all say we do, or at least that we should, but do we really - really as in all the time, no matter what's going on around us?

I want to share something I came across recently that addresses how critically important it is for us to have absolute confidence in God's Providence. As we've been saying, in these couple of weeks before Labor Day, when work slows down a bit, it's a good time to take a step back and take a fresh look at things. I think you'll find the words of Father Ramiere one way to do that. You'll be reminded of many things we've talked about before, like the importance of us seeing things on a supernatural level at all times. But I'll leave it to you to apply these words to your own situation.

Please read these remarks slowly and thoughtfully; it's rich and and so needs to be savored one mouthful at a time. If you do that, then you may very well see a change in the way you approach your work today and every day from now on.

"First Principle. Nothing is done, nothing happens, either in the material or in the moral world, which God has not foreseen from all eternity, and which He has not willed, or at least permitted. Second Principle: God can will nothing, He can permit nothing, but in view of the end He proposed to Himself in creating the world; i.e., in view of His glory and the glory of the Man-God, Jesus Christ, His only Son. To these two principles...we shall add a third, which will complete the elucidation of this whole subject: As long as man lives upon earth, God desires to be glorified through happiness of this privileged creature; and consequently in God's designs the interest of man's sanctification and happiness is inseparable from the interest of the divine glory.

"If we do not lose sight of these principles, which no Christian can question, we shall understand that our confidence in the Providence of our Father in Heaven cannot be too great, too absolute, too childlike. If nothing but what He permits happens, and if He can permit nothing but what is for our happiness, then we have nothing to fear, except not being sufficiently submissive to God. As long as we keep ourselves united with Him and we walk after His designs, were all creatures to turn against us they could not harm us. He who relies upon God becomes by this very reliance as powerful and as invincible as God, and created powers can no more prevail against him than against God Himself. This confidence in the providence of God cannot, evidently, dispense us from doing all that is in our power to accomplish His designs; but after having done all that depends on our efforts we will abandon ourselves complete to God for the rest. This abandonment should extend, in fact, to everything - to the past, the the present, to the future; to the body and all its conditions; to the soul and all its miseries, as well as all its qualities; to blessings; to afflictions; to the good will of men, and to their malice; to the vicissitudes of the material, and the revolutions of the moral, world; to life and to death; to time and to eternity." (Fr. H. Ramiere, S.J.)