God’s providence and our needs and limitations

By Fr. Roy Cimagala *

          IF there’s anything we can learn from that beautiful gospel

episode of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes (cfr. Mt

15,29-37), it surely is that God will always provide for our needs and

limitations. He will, in fact, do everything to snatch us from the

worst evil that can happen to us through the most effective and wise

redemptive work of Christ.

          God always provides for our needs. He is a very

compassionate God who cannot tolerate to see people suffer. That

gospel story has a very happy, uplifting ending.

          And yet, if I may, we can ask the question—that if God is

that compassionate and generous, then why is there so much suffering,

poverty and misery around? It would even look like God is completely

indifferent to this sad condition worldwide. It would look like many

people are left to rot in their miserable condition.

          The answer, of course, is that, yes, God is always

compassionate. He cannot tolerate seeing people suffer. He will always

provide for all our needs. He even went to the extent of becoming man

in Christ who had to offer his life to attain the greatest need of

mankind—our salvation. With that supreme act of compassion and

generosity freely done, what other need do we have that would not be

taken care of by God?

          The truth is that God has provided us with everything. From

our life with all its natural endowments to the air and water, to the

abundant food from plants and animals and other resources, he has

given them all for us to use and to live with the dignity of being

children of God.

          The problem is that we do not know how to manage them, how

to care and help one another. There is so much indifference and

self-indulgence, the germs that would develop into a worldwide

pandemic of social injustice and inequality.

          And when we are faced with our limitations and a state of

helplessness, we should just be ready for them and know not only how

to deal with them but also how to derive something good from them. In

these instances of the hard predicaments, for example, when we seem to

be at a loss as to what to do, we should just see at what God does,

after we have done all things possible to solve our problems.

          We need to trust in God’s providence and mercy. We have to

learn to live a spirit of abandonment in the hands of God. Yes, if we

have faith in God, in his wisdom and mercy, in his unfailing love for

us, we know that everything will always work out for the good. If we

are with God, we can always dominate whatever suffering can come our

way in the same manner that Christ absorbed all his passion and death

on the cross.

          Let’s always remember that God, in his ineffable ways, can

also talk to us through these crosses. In fact, he can convey precious

messages and lessons through them. It would be good that we have a

theological attitude toward them, and be wary of our tendency to react

to them in a purely human way, based only on our senses and feelings

and on worldly trends.

          In all our affairs and situations in life, we should always

go to God to ask for his help and guidance, and to trust his ways and

his providence, even if the outcome of our prayers and petitions

appears unanswered, if not, contradicted.

* Chaplain Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com