The Adorable Providence

I have an old friend that I meet with twice a year – around the date of her birthday and around the date of my birthday.  We had one of our lunches yesterday and we got to talking about our lives, and we talked about the ambitions we had in my younger days that did not work out.  To some extent I for my part can rightly blame myself for stymieing my own progress and this hurts; but since I became a Carmelite I have lived in the Providential world, and when I apply this teaching about the Divine Providence to my life thus far, it seems to me that if I believe that God has been guiding my life, I must believe that He willed what I am and what I do here now, and therefore equally He did not will what I tried unsuccessfully to achieve.  Sometimes if our hoped-for progress in life is blocked partly or wholly through our own fault, we can console ourselves with the thought that He chooses the means to divert us from our goals and to achieve His goals.  Sometimes those means may involve serious illness or an addiction or an accident that brings our progress to an end, sometimes we just mess up.  Either way the Adorable Providence has brought me to the place where the Good Lord wants me to be here and now. And it's the here and now that really matters, not the past.

Intercessions:

Brian Davis – cancer

Marie, Bernard (and wife Angela caring for him) - cancer

Siena, Elara – sick children

Wojtek – massive heart attack leaving him incapacitated

David - housebound

Sophia – blind infant