Last month I was doing some research in Rome. In the place where I stayed the only daily English paper was New York Times. However there was no page in the paper without articles about a certain American president. Looks like Mr President is a must-be-topic of all conversations. So let me start with Mr President of United States. Abraham Lincoln was not in favour of religion for most of his life. He died at the age of 56. When he was in his forties he started changing his attitude. The horrors of war impacted him badly. There were fifty hospitals for wounded soldiers in Washington. Every day 50 men died there. However it was the factor that drew Lincoln deeper into the providence of God. He would say: “We cannot but believe, that He who made the world still governs it.” Around that time his 11-year-old son Willie died. Lincoln turned to a Presbyterian pastor Phineas Gurley then. He revealed that he was “driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I have nowhere else to go.”
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Lincoln’s experience wasn’t unusual. The First Reading taken from the Prophet Isaiah comes from the time when the People of God lost everything. They were driven out of their homeland. They were exiles. However from this confronting situation come the words of God which they welcomed treasured and passed on to the next generations: “Does a woman forget her baby at the breast, or fail to cherish the son of her womb? Yet even if these forget, I will never forget you.” God who created the world did not withdraw himself from the world but he is ever present. St John Chrysostom put it this way: “He provides and upholds all that he made.” “Look at the birds in the sky. They do not sow or reap or gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. - says Jesus in the Gospel – Are you not worth much more than they are?”
“But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it? With infinite power God could always create something better.” The doubts and confusion which can be found in people’s hearts and minds have made their way into the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Catechism quotes those doubts and confusion not only to answer them but also to acknowledge them and to send a message to the people who probe these questions, that their struggles are heard and respected. “With infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world ‘in a state of journeying’ towards its ultimate perfection. In God's plan this process of becoming involves the appearance of certain beings and the disappearance of others, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, both constructive and destructive forces of nature. With physical good there exists also physical evil as long as creation has not reached perfection.”
My Dear Friends in Christ! May the Holy Spirt enlighten us to be “Stewards entrusted with the mysteries of God,” mysteries which bring light into the experiences of those whom we meet in this state of journeying so that they “must think of us as Christ’s servants.” As those who like the Pastor Lincoln went to can see the active presence of Christ, even where the prevailing thought is that God is an absentee. “We cannot but believe, that He who made the world still governs it.”
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Lincoln’s experience wasn’t unusual. The First Reading taken from the Prophet Isaiah comes from the time when the People of God lost everything. They were driven out of their homeland. They were exiles. However from this confronting situation come the words of God which they welcomed treasured and passed on to the next generations: “Does a woman forget her baby at the breast, or fail to cherish the son of her womb? Yet even if these forget, I will never forget you.” God who created the world did not withdraw himself from the world but he is ever present. St John Chrysostom put it this way: “He provides and upholds all that he made.” “Look at the birds in the sky. They do not sow or reap or gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. - says Jesus in the Gospel – Are you not worth much more than they are?”
“But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it? With infinite power God could always create something better.” The doubts and confusion which can be found in people’s hearts and minds have made their way into the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Catechism quotes those doubts and confusion not only to answer them but also to acknowledge them and to send a message to the people who probe these questions, that their struggles are heard and respected. “With infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world ‘in a state of journeying’ towards its ultimate perfection. In God's plan this process of becoming involves the appearance of certain beings and the disappearance of others, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, both constructive and destructive forces of nature. With physical good there exists also physical evil as long as creation has not reached perfection.”
My Dear Friends in Christ! May the Holy Spirt enlighten us to be “Stewards entrusted with the mysteries of God,” mysteries which bring light into the experiences of those whom we meet in this state of journeying so that they “must think of us as Christ’s servants.” As those who like the Pastor Lincoln went to can see the active presence of Christ, even where the prevailing thought is that God is an absentee. “We cannot but believe, that He who made the world still governs it.”
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