by Pat Collins CM

This is an excerpt from Reducing stress and finding peace (Veritas 2002)

Jesus believed that God's providence embraces evil and transforms it, much as the oyster transforms the irritating presence of grit within itself, into a beautiful pearl. No matter what weaknesses people have, what mistakes they make, or what sins they commit, they are integrated into God's plan and embraced by Divine providence.

As a result they can become the birthplace of blessing. Evil doesn't have the last word; that word belongs to God, and it is a word of blessing and victory. God has plans ABC and D. Each one is as good, if not better, than the last. That is evident in the story of Joseph and his brothers. They are merciless when they betray their brother. Years later they have to travel to Egypt in order to seek food during a time of famine. Unbeknown to them Joseph is the man they have to deal with. Having revealed his identity to the brothers he says: 'Come close to me.' When they had done so, he said, 'I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you.' (Gen 45:4-5).

In other words God used the treachery of the brothers as a springboard for their own future blessing! Later on we would betray our brother Jesus, not into slavery but into death. But just as the misfortunes of Joseph led to blessing, so the death of Jesus leads to our salvation. St Paul grasped the nature of this paradoxical dynamic when he said: 'Where sin abounds the grace of God more abounds' (Rm 5:20). I'm convinced that those who develop a strong trust in divine providence are much less prone to anxiety than would otherwise be the case.

Seek first God's Kingdom

That is why Jesus said in Matt 6:25-34:

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, "What shall we eat?" or "What shall we drink?" or "What shall we wear?" For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

The extent to which the self-centred ego dies in order to devote itself single-mindedly to God and the purposes of God, is the extent to which anxious fear will be replaced by inner peace. As Aldous Huxley observed in his Perennial Philosophy, “Fear, worry, anxiety – these form the central core of industrialised selfhood. Fear cannot be got rid of by personal effort, but only by the ego's absorption in a cause greater than its own interests. Absorption in any cause will rid the mind of some of its fears; but only absorption in the loving and knowing of the divine Ground (i.e. God) can rid it of all fear”.