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Gospel: Saint John 6:
1-15
Abandonment
to God during trials and dryness
20.1
First Point
It seems in today's
Gospel that Jesus Christ wants to suggest that there are times of trial and
dryness when souls cannot find much help from other people, either because
these people they are not sufficiently enlightened by talent or experience,
or because God does not give them a sufficiently great abundance of graces
to relieve those who are in difficulties.
Souls in
this circumstance should, nevertheless, not hesitate to speak with their
spiritual directors, because this is the means established by God, and
because the directors can always help to some extent.
On this
occasion in today's Gospel, Jesus Christ did not hesitate to speak to his
disciples, to tell them to provide for the needs of the people, even
though they were not able to do so. At the same time he made use of them
to distribute the bread he had multiplied to feed everyone.[i]
This is how
God wants you always to turn to those who guide you, represented in this
Gospel by the Apostles, even though at times and in certain difficulties,
doing this may seem to you quite useless. God wishes you always to avail
yourself, in so far as you are able, of the ordinary means he provides for
your guidance, even if this is without any success.
20.2 Second Point
In your times of
trouble, when you have had recourse to those who are appointed to guide you
and they have been unable to provide a suitable remedy for your difficulty,
God wants you then to remain completely abandoned to his guidance, awaiting
from him alone and from his goodness all the help you need. Follow the
example of this crowd of people who had come following Jesus Christ and who
waited patiently for him to provide for their nourishment without even
taking the trouble to lay their needs before him.
You should,
in fact, be convinced that God will not allow you to be tempted and
burdened beyond your strength.[ii]
When men can do nothing to help you, then it is that God himself does
everything for you, wonderfully showing at one and the same time his power
and his goodness. This is why you should abandon yourself to God, as the
people who followed Our Lord, to suffer as much as it pleases him (as being
an advantage for you), or to be delivered from your trials by means God
judges most profitable for you, without troubling yourself trying to achieve
peace by your own efforts, which will often be useless.
20.3 Third Point
After we have abandoned
ourselves to God like this, it usually happens that God makes us experience
very extraordinary effects of his goodness and protection, as he shows us in
the Gospel today: after he multiplied the five loaves and the two fishes
offered to him, and five thousand people -- not counting the little children
-- had eaten their fill, there still remained a large quantity.[iii]
Be assured,
then, that once you have placed yourself in God's hands, willing to suffer
whatever and as much as he may desire, though he still leaves you in sorrow,
he will help you by his grace to endure this trial, perhaps in a way that is
not obvious, or else he will deliver you from it by surprising means and at
a time when you least expect it. This is what David assures us he
experienced in his own difficulties when he says: I waited on the Lord
with great patience, and finally he heard me; he granted my prayers and
withdrew me from the depths of misery and from the deep pit. He set my foot
upon a rock and guided my steps. Many persons on seeing this marvel, have
learned to revere God and to place all their confidence in him.[iv]
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