Back in college, when I was curious about the Catholic faith, the only Catholic on campus I could find to take me to a mass…eventually became my husband. Some years later, when I was struggling as a new teacher, a chance question from a student (What’s inside a snake?) turned my classroom from chaos to learning center. More recently, what began as the offer to take communion to a friend’s mother has become the center of how I spend my retirement—working with the carebound.
God’s Word in Providence’s Voice
If you are a person of prayer, you most likely have your own list of situations where hindsight enables you to see God’s hand intervening in your life. This is God’s Word—his Love and Truth spoken into your life. God’s Word comes through God’s voice—the often small events that function to put God’s Word into our mind and heart.
St Augustine points this out beautifully in the selection from him in Sunday’s Vigils in the Divine Office. Speaking of John the Baptist, he says, “John is the voice, but the Lord is the Word who was in the beginning. John is the voice that lasts for a time; from the beginning Christ is the Word who lives forever.”
God’s voice and Word work in the world through Divine Providence. Divine Providence is the “dispositions by which God guides his creation toward its perfection.” (CCC 302) Divine Providence is how God makes “all things work together for those who love the Lord.” (Romans 8:28) It is the Word of God coming into the world through his voice of events and people.
Today’s First Reading
Today’s first reading comes from the book of Numbers. Numbers tells part of the story of the Israelites’ journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. The Israelites are wandering around the Sinai Peninsula. They are many. They approach the peoples of the lands they pass through with the simple request, “Let us pass through your land.” But when kings and peoples refuse, there is war, and the Israelites win. As the Israelites approach the land of Moab, Balak, the Moabite King, asks Balaam, his prophet, to cast a spell on the Israelites. At first Balaam refuses, but then he agrees to meet with King Balak to discuss it. On his way, he has an experience very similar to Paul’s encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus. An angel blocks the way. At first, only Balaam’s donkey could see the angel. She balks, hurting Balaam. He strikes her. A conversation follows between the donkey and Balaam (read it in chapter 22). Finally, Balaam sees the angel, too. Balaam is convinced the angel is of the True God. Instead of casting a spell on the Israelites that they might be defeated, he gives them a blessing.
Part of the blessing is in today’s Scripture. It concludes:
The utterance of Balaam, son of Beor,
the utterance of the man whose eye is true,
The utterance of one who hears what God says,
and knows what the Most High knows,
Of one who sees what the Almighty sees,
enraptured, and with eyes unveiled.
I see him, though not now;
I behold him, though not near:
A star shall advance from Jacob,
and a staff shall rise from Israel.
Here is a situation 1400 years before Jesus’ birth where a non-Jewish prophet prophesies the coming of Christ. The situation of the king’s fear and Balaam’s prophecy were the voice of God. The Word of God was God’s care for the Israelites (and, apparently God’s desire to also care for the Moabites and others who feared them).
Fascinating. And important.
Divine Providence: The Word of God…Predicted
I like the way Bishop Fulton Sheen describes the importance of such prophecy in his book, Life of Christ:
“History is full of men who have claimed that they came from God, or that they were gods, or that they bore messages from God…Each has a right to be heard and considered….Reason dictates that if any of these men actually came from God, the least thing that God could do to support his claim would be to pre-announce his coming….Reason further assures us that if God did not do this, then there would be nothing to prevent any imposter from appearing in history and saying, “I come from God.”…In such cases there would be no objective, historical way of testing the messenger. We would have only his word for it, and, of course, he could be wrong.
With this test one can evaluate the claimants. Socrates had no one to foretell his birth. Buddha had no one to pre-announce him and tell his message or tell the day when he would sit under the tree. Confucius did not have the name of his mother and his birthplace recorded, nor were they given to men centuries before he arrived so that when he did come, men would know he was a messenger from God. But, with Christ it was different. Because of the Old Testament prophecies. His coming was not unexpected. There were no predictions about Buddha, Confucius, Lao-Tze, Mohammed, or anyone else; but there were predictions about Christ. (Fulton Sheen, Life of Christ, from p 1-3)
Divine Providence: The Word of God…Protected
Sunday, in the Gospel, we saw Jesus sending John’s disciples back to him, saying, “Tell John what you hear and see.” What they saw and heard were the prophecies coming true.
Interestingly, today Jesus handles a similar request from the chief priests and the elders very differently. Today’s conversation occurs during Holy Week. Jesus has just cast the money changers out of the temple. The chief priests ask, “By what authority are you doing these things? And who gave you this authority?” Jesus doesn’t answer. He turns the question back to them? “Where was John’s baptism from? Was it of heavenly or human origin?” He protects the Word of God which will come to speak in its fullness through the cross in just a few days.
Divine Providence: The Ways of God…and Us
The description of Divine Providence in the catechism is very interesting. This is the name the Church gives to the work of God in time and history. (See the Catholic Catechism, paragraphs 302-315) We are in time and history. No prophets predicted our births or lives. We are very minor players in the drama of God’s “journey of life”
But the same Divine Providence that had Balaam talk to his mule, John the Baptist be a voice crying in the wilderness, and Jesus be born in a manger so he could die on a cross–That same Word takes an interest in who we marry, what work we do, how we make transitions from one part of our life to another. It is the same God, the same Divine Providence, the same Word of God who speaks to us and through us in the ordinary events of our lives.
Wow!
Prayer:
O Lord, where is your Word for me today? Who speaks it? What is the message of Truth and Love which you give to me today? Open my ears, Lord, help me to hear your voice. Open my eyes, Lord, help me to see Your Face. Open my heart, Lord, help me to love like you. Give me the gift of recognizing Divine Providence in my life today.
