Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - When we read the Gospel as believers, and faith tells us, we enter living history, the history of Salvation which is taking place epoch after epoch, from one person to the next, when with an act of faith individual freedom opens to Christ the Redeemer of the world. This means that the words and the events of Jesus, narrated by the Gospel, are not things of the past, they are things of the present, because Jesus lives, today as yesterday and forever.
He is above time and history, He makes History because “Through him all things came into being, not one thing came into being except through him.” (Jn 1, 3). Christians follow Jesus not as an Event of the past, tied to old doctrine, instead we follow Him now as an Event of the present, we believe in Him now working in the today of history in our own personal story. When true Christians read the Gospel they are thinking not only of what Jesus said and did in the past, they read it in the present, finding in it their own personal History of salvation, they welcome that Event, not only as something which happened but as something which is happening today!
Like Andrew and John, who met Jesus in “those” days, in their times, we too can meet him in our time, because He continues to pass by drawing us with his Presence. If we entrust ourselves to him we continue to hear him say: “'If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Mk 8,34). If we obey the Lord's Word we “enter”, through faith, into the History of Jesus. If we remain through love in the History of Jesus we realise that everything else, all the rest of history, running before our eyes, is mysteriously guided by what we believers recognise as Divine Providence.
Believers, who believe the Gospel without any doubt, and who really love Jesus, the Church, the world, looking at history from 'within' the salvific history of Christ, realises that everything is Divine Providence, even the saddest and most painful of events. In fact nothing escapes the 'control' of God, everything contributes towards the realisation of His plan for us, a plan of sanctification!
Although it is true, that because of the mystery of human freedom, every individual can prevent God's plan for him from being realised, no one can prevent the realisation of God's plan for others. God's plans, plans for salvation, are achieved even if individual freedoms can refuse salvation, because they cannot prevent the salvation of those who accept this salvation with an act of total trust in God.
How God achieves his plans, is often beyond our understanding, but he does, despite all the evil present in the world, this is a certainty of our faith and it is demonstrated by two thousand years of Christianity, starting from the pivotal Event of salvation: Jesus' death on the Cross and his Resurrection.
This is why no one was able to prevent the saints from becoming holy, or the martyrs from sacrificing their live. Those who follow Jesus become part of his History, they receive eternal life, as Jesus says in the Gospel: “The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice; I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life; they will never be lost and no one will ever steal them from my hand.” (Jn 10, 27-28).
Every promise of Jesus, for those who believe, is kept, despite those who do not believe and even those who 'row' against Him. No one can stop Divine Providence and if we are united with Divine Omnipotence, through an act of faith, vivified with a prayer of trust in the Father, in obedience to the Word of Jesus and to the Church, we experience in our own personal life and history, that God is truly almighty, that He alone can change evil into good in the past and in the present, again and again.
It is true that Judas, one of the twelve apostles, prevented God's plan of salvation for him from being achieved; he stopped Jesus' plan for him, but he could not stop this plan for others from being achieved! No one can prevent God from doing anything, simply because only God is God Man is infinitely distant from being God and so is the Devil. Only God is God! And there is only one Divine Providence, not two or even more, 'competing' with one another.
For believers in Christ, there exists only one plan for salvation which has been achieved by our Lord Jesus Christ. As Saint Paul says “We are well aware that God works with those who love him, those who have been called in accordance with his purpose, and turns everything to their good. He decided beforehand who were the ones destined to be moulded to the pattern of his Son, so that he should be the eldest of many brothers; it was those so destined that he called; those that he called, he justified, and those that he has justified he has brought into glory.
After saying this, what can we add? If God is for us, who can be against us? Since he did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for the sake of all of us, then can we not expect that with him he will freely give us all his gifts?” (Rom 8, 28-32). This is the certainty of faith lived by every believer in Christ: with Jesus we receive everything!
God is our Divine Providence, because by believing in Him, everything, absolutely everything, is for the good of those who love Him! During the general audience last year on March 12, the Holy Father, speaking about two great Christian figures in the late Middle Ages, Boethius e Cassiodorus, said about Divine Providence who governs the world: “The loftiest good is God: Boethius - and he teaches us this - learned not to sink into a fatalism that extinguishes hope. He teaches us that it is not the event but Providence that governs and Providence has a face. It is possible to speak to Providence because Providence is God” (Benedict XVI, 12 March 2008). (Agenzia Fides 11/3/2009; righe 68, parole 1.071)
