We just had a double whammy of a natural calamity-an intensity 7.2-magnitude earthquake and the now-touted strongest typhoon this year, Yolanda. It's understandable that we are at our wit's end as to what to get from these two disasters.
And so many of us fall into all sorts of predicaments-fear, anxiety, self-pity, depression, bitterness, etc. The worst part of it is when we lose our faith in God.
We have to avert all these, because they really have no basis. They come about precisely because our understanding of things is not completed by our faith in God. In short, these calamities are special moments of exercising our faith.
Remember what Christ said quite often, reproaching those very close to him for their lack of faith. "O you of little faith, why did you doubt," he told Peter when Peter started disbelieving that he was walking on water. (Mt 14,31)
When the disciples were in a boat tossed wildly by strong winds and lashing waves while Christ was asleep, Christ also reproached them similarly. "O you of little faith, why are you fearful." (Mt 8,26) Then he calmed the raging sea.
We are human, and we tend to see things solely from the point of view of what our senses only perceive, what our feelings tell us, what our limited understanding of things show us. We need to go beyond these levels and categories, and learn to think, feel and behave according to what our faith tells us.
And what does our faith tell us? It tells us that God never leaves us. He is always at the very core of our being, and of things in general, taken individually or collectively, or in whatever consideration we see and take them.
And to be sure, his presence in us and in everything else is not just passive, but very active, full of wisdom, love, mercy and omnipotence even as he allows us and the whole world of creation to act and behave according to their nature taken in both their positive and negative sides, in their powers as well as in their limitations.
We are in God's hands always. Nothing happens without him in the middle of things and events. Even when we commit mistakes or when nature suffers its limitations, God continues to be around, drawing things to himself.
This is the truth of faith we have to relish, revisiting it often in our meditations so that it may sink deep in our consciousness and give shape and direction to our attitudes, thoughts, desires, words and deeds.
This is the truth that will save us from being victimized by our own imperfect understanding of things or by the mere play of our emotions and other natural conditions that cannot take on the whole of the rich reality that is meant for us.
It might be good to review what the Catechism says about divine providence.
Point No. 55 says, "What is divine providence? Divine providence consists in the dispositions with which God leads his creatures toward their ultimate end. God is the sovereign Master of his own plan. To carry it out, however, he also makes use of the cooperation of his creatures. For God grants his creatures the dignity of acting on their own and of being causes for each other."
Then on the question of evil, Point No. 58 says, "Why does God permit evil? Faith gives us the certainty that God would not permit evil if he did not cause a good to come from that very evil. This was realized in a wondrous way by God in the death and resurrection of Christ. In fact, from the greatest of all moral evils (the murder of his Son) he has brought forth the greatest of all goods (the glorification of Christ and our redemption.)
These doctrines of our faith may be a nosebleed in the beginning. But to be sure, that's only in the beginning. We just have to wade through them and familiarize ourselves with them, just like anything that is precious but arduous in our life. In the end, they will become second nature to us, a working principle in our thinking and action.
On a personal note, I would venture to say that these calamities we are having are mere expressions of the natural course of nature that has its limitations. God allows them to happen, among many other reasons, to prepare us for our own death and the end of time that will surely come, and our own meeting with God in the Last Judgment.
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Email: roycimagala@gmail.com