United States Catholic Catechism for Adults

Chapter 5. I Believe in God • 63

MEDITATION

God’s Providential Care God has a special love for every human person and a special plan for each of us. Often enough, God’s plan is not what we would expect. Look at the lives of great people like St. John Paul II or St. Teresa of Calcutta. During World War II, Karol Wojtyla (St. John Paul II) was a laborer and an actor, but led by God, he entered an underground seminary. Born in Albania, St. Teresa found herself seeking out the dying in the gutters of Calcutta. Have the lives of these two unfolded according to their original plans? Surely not. If and when we accept God’s love in our lives, he can ask surprising and sometimes challenging things of us. Why do so many of us tend to brush aside God’s plan for us in our lives? It seems to be because we find it hard to imagine how he can be so loving to us, especially in awkward surroundings. Yet if the divine Word of God could become one of us by taking on our human nature with the cooperation of a young woman in Nazareth, God can surely touch our lives. PRAYER Act of Faith O my God, I firmly believe that you are one God in three divine Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; I believe that your divine Son became man and died for our sins,

and that he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe these and all the truths which the Holy Catholic Church teaches, because you have revealed them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived. • My Lord and my God, give me everything that brings me closer to you.

—St. Nicholas of Flüe