The Providence of God Reaches from End to End Mightily and Orders All things Sweetly

Let's face it. The discipleship of following the Lord Jesus can be at times grueling training. Yet Jesus himself did not do it alone. His coach was always with him to be the inspiration of his soul and the cause of his joy - his Father.

When we base our Christian life on God the Father with Christ, we don't measure the providential things in our life by ourselves. We notice that people who base their life events on how they feel about it will eventually lapse into the health and wealth Gospel - if I am healthy and rich God must be blessing me, but if it rains on my day, he has departed. A real disciple never measures their following of Christ by their own ego or satisfaction, but sees every event in their life, whether it is a joyful, sorrowful, luminous, or glorious mystery, as a means of relationship with God the Father.

I find that unless people have this relationship with God the Father in his providence, they will easily get puffed up by success or easily discouraged by failure. In today's readings for Mass, we see that Joseph's brothers doubted this relationship. When? After their father died. They suddenly found themselves like a ship without an anchor and they panicked. Jesus reminds us in the Gospel today that "Even the hairs of your head are counted," meaning that God cares for the tiniest bit of you. This kind of trust, however, where you begin to see the Father caring for you in the tiniest things, only can come about when you enter into intimacy with him, so that you see him in the tiniest corners of your heart, knowing that he will care for every drop of rain or ray of the sun that hits your forehead.

The Most Holy Eucharist is the place where we become perfected in the relationship with God the Father because it is our supersubstantial daily bread, the grace given for this day, the very relationship with the Father that we experience here and now. Let every Eucharistic communion be an embrace with God the Father, whose providence "reaches from end to end mightily and orders all things sweetly" (Wisdom 8:1).