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Chapter 5. I Believe in God • 63
MEDITATION
God’s Providential Care
God has a special love for every human person and a special plan for
each of us. Often enough, God’s plan is not what we would expect. Look
at the lives of great people like Pope John Paul II or Blessed Teresa of
Calcutta. During World War II, Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) was a
laborer and an actor, but led by God, he entered an underground semi-
nary. Born in Albania, Blessed Teresa found herself seeking out the dying
in the gutters of Calcutta. Have the lives of these two unfolded according
to their original plans? Surely not. If and when we accept God’s love in
our lives, he can ask surprising and sometimes challenging things of us.
Why do so many of us tend to brush aside God’s plan for us in our
lives? It seems to be because we find it hard to imagine how he can be so
loving to us, especially in awkward surroundings. Yet if the divine Word
of God could become one of us by taking on our human nature with
the cooperation of a young woman in Nazareth, God can surely touch
our lives.
PRAYER
Act of Faith
O my God, I firmly believe that you are one God
in three divine Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit;
I believe that your divine Son became man and died for our sins,
and that he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe these and all the truths which the Holy Catholic
Church teaches,
because you have revealed them,
who can neither deceive nor be deceived.
•
My Lord and my God, give me everything
that brings me closer to you.
—St. Nicholas of Flüe