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
