He Leadeth Me

Why has God allowed this evil to happen?” Why persecutions? If God must allow natural disasters, or even wars because of human failings, why can’t he at least allow his flock to be shepherded and comforted during such calamities? Surely he could defend and protect his flock instead of having it singled out for special attack such as this. The perplexity and pain grew within me as

God’s promise of a Redeemer, and the coming of Christ. I spoke of the example he set us of one perfect human life, in which every thought and action was dedicated to doing God’s will, the will of the Father, and so restoring again that perfect order that had originally been God’s plan for all mankind. I talked of how he had suffered every indignity a human being could suffer, from a humble birth, to poverty, to thirty years of the dullest and most routine life of work in a small and backward village, to rejection and suffering and pain and finally death, the end that faces every man. I spoke of his resurrection and victory over death—that central fact of all Christian belief that gives us absolute assurance of life beyond death, of life beyond this life, the assurance that there is a meaning to ma

Faith, then, is the fulcrum of our moral and spiritual balance. The problems of evil or of sin, of injustice, of sufferings, even of death, cannot upset the man of faith or shake his trust and confidence in God. His powerlessness to solve such problems will not be a cause of despair or despondency for him, no matter how strong his concern and anxiety may be for himself and for those around him. At the core of his being there exists an unshakable confidence that God will provide, in the mysterious ways of his own divine providence.

e, what must make the difference, is the faith that inspires all our decisions and choices and actions. Without faith, our lives are just so many empty and boring routines, hollow at the core, as day succeeds day with little sense of meaning or feeling of accomplishment. With faith, however, even the most boring and routine action of every day has merit and significance for us—and for the kingdom of God.

Only by a lively faith can a man learn to live in peace among the tensions of this world, secure in his ability (with God’s help) to weather the crises of life, whenever they come and whatever they may be, for he knows that God is with him. In the midst of suffering or failure or even sin, when he feels lost or overwhelmed by danger or temptation, his faith still reminds him of God. By faith he has learned to lift himself above the circumstances of this life and to keep his eyes fixed upon God, from whom he expects the grace and the help he needs, no matter how unworthy he may feel.

prayer, we refer to God all that happens in our life each day, whether good or ill. For there is no difference between a man of faith and a man without faith (or of little faith) with respect to the routine experiences all of us undergo every

man of faith is always conscious of God, not only in his own life but in the lives of others. This is the basis of true charity, of that great commandment by which we are instructed to “love God with our whole mind and our whole heart and our whole soul, and our neighbor as ourselves.” Faith, then, is the basis for love; it is in the insight of faith that we understand the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of all men.

Love, Saint John writes repeatedly, is the one thing that fulfills all the commandments and the law. But prior to love, and bolstering it at the core, is faith; we must have faith before we can love, or we will surely end up loving the wrong thing—loving ourselves more than God, or loving creatures for themselves—and this is the meaning of sin. To increase our love, to love properly, we must strive always to increase our faith, and we do this by means of prayer and the sacraments.

we can pray always by making each action and work and suffering of the day a prayer insofar as it has been offered and promised to God.

But we cannot pray as if we were talking to the empty air; so in the very act of praying, we subconsciously remind ourselves of the reality and the presence of God, thereby strengthening our belief in him. And that is why, again in my opinion, the Morning Offering is still one of the best practices of prayer—no matter how old-fashioned some may think it. For in it, at the beginning of each day, we accept from God and offer back to him all the prayers, works, and sufferings of the day, and so serve to remind ourselves once again of his providence and his kingdom.