21 Sepotember, Antonio Cardinal Bacci: Meditations For Each Day

Seeing God in All Things

1. Very often, when things are not going our way, we become restless and irritable. We want health, and instead we are sick. We long for success and high position, and instead we are forgotten and humiliated. We desire to be holy, and instead God humbles our pride and allows us to fall into sin again and again. We wish that affairs in our immediate surroundings would proceed according to our liking, but in fact everything happens in an entirely different way. What is the remedy for the tension and annoyance which we experience on these occasions? There is only one; we must see God in all the events and circumstances of life and do His will lovingly and generously. Faith, says St. Francis de Sales, is a ray of light from Heaven which makes us see God in all things and all things in God. It was his great disciple, St. Jane Frances de Chantal, who wrote: “To be nothing, to be much, to be small; to command, to obey one person or another; to be humiliated or forgotten; to be poor or rich; to be underworked or overworked; to be alone or to be in company; to receive spiritual consolations or to experience aridity and temptation; to be healthy, or to be sick and obliged to languish for year… to live a long time or to die soon, perhaps immediately; all must be accepted from God. If others have greater graces and gifts, we are happy in God. Our life must be like a great Amen which harmonises with that of the heavenly choirs…”

If we see the love of God in all things, in all happenings, and in all the troubles of life, nothing will upset us or cause us excessive anguish. We know that we are in good hands and that everything is arranged for our good.

2. Sometimes we fail to see God in all the events of life because we lack faith and absolute confidence in the Lord. We must try to increase this faith and live always in the presence of God, and we must regard the honour and glory of this world as worth absolutely nothing without God. “What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world, but suffer the loss of his own soul?” (Mt. 16:26)

We often attach too much importance to the things of this world, which viewed in the light of eternity are worth very little. When we find ourselves at the point of death and think back over the events of life, how small these things will seem to us! Then we shall marvel at our folly and regret that we worried so much about them, while we allowed ourselves to forget the only being really necessary to us, God Himself. St. Francis de Sales said that when we arrive at the end of life, the affairs with which we have been preoccupied will seem about as important as the sand-castles we built as children, castles which cost us a lot of trouble to build and a great deal of sorrow afterwards when they had been destroyed.

3. Are we in the habit of seeing all things in God and God in all things? Do we accept all things from His holy hands and do His will cheerfully and lovingly?
Do we try to control ourselves when God sends us sorrow as well as joy? If we find we are in need of reform in this matter, we should make good resolutions.