It is not so much what happens in your life that matters; it is rather how you react to it. You can always tell the character of a person by the size of the things that make him mad. A man can work joyfully at a picture puzzle, so long as he believes the puzzle can be put together into a composite whole. But if the puzzle is a hoax, or if it was not made by a rational mind, then one would go mad trying to work it out. It is this absence of purpose of life, along with its consequent fear and frustration, which has sometimes produced the neuroses and psychoses of the modern mind.

How do you react to the vicissitudes of life? Do you rebel because God does not answer your prayers to become rich? Do you deny God because He called away your husband, your wife, your child? In the midst of a war do you summon God to judgment as the criminal who started it all and ask, "Why does He not stop it?"

May I offer you three considerations to help you build a firm hope in God?

1. - Remember that everything that happens has been foreseen and known by God from all eternity, and  is either willed by Him, or at least permitted.

God's knowledge does not grow as ours does, from ignorance to wisdom. The Fall did not catch God napping. God is science, but He is not a scientist: God knows all, but He learns nothing from experience. He does not look on you from heaven as you look down on an ant-hill, seeing you going in and out of your house, walking to work, and then telling an angel-secretary to note down the unkind word you said to the grocery boy. Why is it we always think of God as watching the bad things we do and never the good deeds? You do your own bookkeeping. Your conscience takes your own dictation. God knows all things  not by looking at you, but by looking into Himself as the Cause of all things. He never reads over your shoulder. An architect can tell you how many rooms will be in your house, and the exact size of each, before the house is built, because he is the cause of the becoming of that house. God is the cause of the being of all things. He knows all before they happen. As a motion picture reel contains the whole story before it is thrown upon the screen, so God knows all before it is acted on the stage of history.

But do not think that because God knows all, therefore He has predetermined you to heaven or hell independently of your merits and irrespective of your freedom.

His knowledge that you shall act in a particular manner is not the immediate cause of your acting, any more than your knowledge that you are sitting down caused you to sit down or prevents you from getting up if you willed to do it. Our Blessed Mother could have refused the dignity of becoming the Mother of God, as Judas could have resisted the temptation to betray. The fact that God knew what each would do did not make them act the way they did.

Because there is no future in God, foreknowing is not forecausing. You may know the stock market very well and, such a stock will sell for 50 points in three months. In three months it does reach 50 points. Did you cause it to reach 50 points, or did you merely foreknow it? You may be in a tower where you can see a man advancing in the distance who has never been over that terrain before. You know that before he reaches the bower he must cross that ditch, wade that pond, tramp those bushes, and climb that hill. You foresee all the possibilities, but you do not cause him to cross those obstacles.

The following story illustrates the fallacy of predestination without freedom. In the colonial days of our country there was a wife who believed in a peculiar kind of predestination, which left no room for human freedom. Her husband, who did not share her eccentricities, one day left for the market. He came back after a few minutes saying he forgot his gun. She said: "You are either predestined to be shot by an Indian, or you are not predestined to be shot. If you are predestined to be shot, the gun will do you no good. If you are not predestined to be shot, you will not need it. Therefore do not take your gun." But he answered: "Suppose I am predestined to be shot by an Indian on condition I do not have my gun?" And that was sound religion. It allows for human freedom. We are our own creators. To those who ask: "If God knew I would lose my soul, why did He make me?" the answer is: "God did not make you as a lost soul. You make yourself." The universe is moral and therefore conditional: "Behold I stand at the door and knock." God knocks! He breaks down no doors. The latch is on our side - not God's.

2. - God allows or permits evil but always for the reason of a greater good related to His love and the salvation of our souls.

God does permit evil. Our Lord Jesus told Judas: "This is your hour." - Luke 22:53 - Evil does have its hour.   All that it can do within that hour is to put out the lights of the world. But God has His day. The evil of the world is inseparably from human freedom, and hence the cost of destroying the world's evil or stopping this war would be the destruction of human freedom. Certainly none of us wants to pay that high price, particularly since God would never permit evil unless He could draw some good from it.

God can draw good out of evil because while the power of doing evil is ours, the effects of our evil deeds are outside of our control and therefore in the hands of God. The brethren of Joseph were free to toss him into a well, but from that point on Joseph was in God's hands. Rightly did he say to his brothers: "You thought evil against me; but God turned it into good...." - Gen. 50:20 -

The evil which God permits must not be judged by its immediate effects, but rather by its ultimate effects. When you go to a theatre you do not walk out because you see a good man suffering in the first act. You give the dramatists credit for a plot. Why can you not do that much with God. The mouse in the piano cannot understand why anyone should disturb his gnawing at the keys by making weird sounds. Much less can our puny minds grasp the plan of God. The slaughter of the Innocents probably saved many boys from growing up into men who on Good Friday would have shouted, "Crucify Him." The physician would not permit an operation if he could not draw health from it and God would not permit evil unless He could draw good from it.

3. - We must do everything within our power to fulfill God's will as it is made known to us by His Mystical Body, the commandments, and our lawfully constituted superiors, and we must also fulfill our duties flowing from our state of life. But everything that is outside our power, we must abandon and surrender to His Holy will.

Notice the distinction between within our power and outside our power. There is to be no fatalism. Some things are under our control. We are not to be like the man who perilously walked the railing of a ship in a storm at sea saying: "I am a fatalist! I believe that when your time comes, there is nothing you can do about it." What is wrong in fatalism is its failure to recognize that, within certain limits, our will can affect the events of life. It would be wrong for us, then, not to do our very best to make that course one which does good to our neighbor and renders glory to God. It is God's will that men should have a free will which they can use in subordination to His and thereby be happy. There was much wisdom in the preacher who said: "You run up against a brick wall every now and then during life. If God wants you to go through that wall, it is up to God to make the hole."

But we are here concerned with those things outside our power, for example, sickness, accidents, bumps on buses, trampled toes in subways, the barbed word of a fellow worker, rain on picnic days, the death of loved one on your wedding day, cold on vacation, the loss of your purse, and moth holes in your suit. God would have prevented any of these things. He could have stopped your headache, prevented a bullet from hitting your boy, forestalled cramps during a swim, and killed the germ that laid you low. But if He did not, it was for a superior reason. Therefore say: "God's will be done."

If you tell an Irishman it is a bad day, nine times out of ten he will answer: "It's a good day to save your soul." It is one of the paradoxes of creation that you gain control by submission.

Does not the scientist gain control over nature by humbly sitting down before the facts of nature and being docile to its teaching? In like manner, surrender yourself to God, and all is yours. Even the irritations of life can be made a stepping stones to salvation. An oyster develops a pearl because a gain of sand irritates it. Cease complaining about your pains and aches. When anyone asks, "How are you?" remember it is not a question, it is a greeting. An act of thanksgiving when things go against our will means more than a thousand acts of thanksgiving when things go according to our will.

Every person in the world is possessed: some are possessed by the devil, some are possessed by self, others are possessed by God.

This broadcast is an appeal to give your to God as if it were yours no longer, for your will is yours only to make it His. Pray not to change God's will; pray rather to change your own. Measure not God's Goodness by His readiness to do your will.

Shall we call Him "Father" and still not believe He wills what is best for His children? Think not that you could do more good for souls if you were well, or you had another position. What matters in life is not where we are but whether we are doing God's will.

Trust not in God because you are good, but because He is good and you are not. Often during the day say: "God loves me, and He is on my side, by my side."

In wartime, do not ask: "If the Japanese and the English, the Germans and the Americans, pray to God; on whose side is God?" For the answer to this question is: "If we all prayed as we ought, we would all be on the same side: "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

Neither ask: "Why do nations which love God fight one another?" The answer is: "They don't." You see how important is the love of God.

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -