At times in our lives we may think that God’s ways are random and that there is no purpose to everything.
Yet, if we step back for a moment, we can see God’s loving hand guiding all of history.
The Church’s Office of Readings presents to us a meditation in this regard during the season of Advent with an excerpt from A Letter to Diognetus.
The letter deals precisely with the reality of God’s plan and how he had a plan since the beginning of time:
He devised a plan, a great and wonderful plan, and shared it only with his Son. As long as he preserved this secrecy and kept his own wise counsel he seemed to be neglecting us, to have no concern for us. But when through his beloved Son he revealed and made public what he had prepared from the very beginning, he gave us all at once gifts such as we could never have dreamt of, even sight and knowledge of himself.
This plan was then put into action, unfolding over the course of many centuries:
When God had made all his plans in consultation with his Son, he waited until a later time, allowing us to follow our own whim, to be swept along by unruly passions, to be led astray by pleasure and desire. Not that he was pleased by our sins: he only tolerated them. Not that he approved of that time of sin: he was planning this era of holiness. When we had been shown to be undeserving of life, his goodness was to make us worthy of it.
God, instead of punishing us, gave us love in the person of Jesus Christ:
When our wickedness had reached its culmination, it became clear that retribution was at hand in the shape of suffering and death. The time came then for God to make known his kindness and power (how immeasurable is God’s generosity and love!). He did not show hatred for us or reject us or take vengeance; instead, he was patient with us, bore with us, and in compassion took our sins upon himself; he gave his own Son as the price of our redemption, the holy one to redeem the wicked, the sinless one to redeem sinners, the just one to redeem the unjust, the incorruptible one to redeem the corruptible, the immortal one to redeem mortals.
When our own lives seem random, we should recall the divine plan of God and how we may not be able to see his plan. God is here, with us, guiding us and showing us the way.
And today we celebrate...