Pius XII: "Trust in God means the abandonment of oneself"
Oct 25, 2020 22:19:15 GMT
Post by Elizabeth on Oct 25, 2020 22:19:15 GMT
Pope Pius XII June 29, 1941
"All men are as children before God; all, event the most profound thinkers and the most experienced leaders of peoples. They judge events with the foreshortened vision of time, which passes and flies past irreparably; God, on the other hand, sees events from on high from the unmoved center of eternity. They have before their eyes the limited view of a few years; God has before Him the all-embracing panorama of the ages.
"Trust in God means the abandonment of oneself . . . in spite of all the doubts suggested by appearance to the contrary, to the wisdom, the infinite love of God. It means believing that nothing in this world escapes His Providence. . . . It means believing that God can permit, at times here below, for some time the preeminence of atheism and of impiety, the lamentable obscuring of a sense of justice, the violation of law, the tormenting of innocent, peaceful, undefended, helpless men. It means believing that God at times thus lets trials befall individuals and peoples, trials of which the malice is the instrument in a design of justice directed toward the punishment of sin, towards purifying persons and peoples through the expiations of this present life and bringing them back by that way to Himself; but it means believing at the same time that this justice always remains here below the justice of a Father inspired and dominated by love.
". . . It means believing finally that the fierce intensity of the trial, like the triumph of evil, will endure even here below only for the a fixed time and not longer, that the Hour of God will come, the hour of mercy, the hour of holy rejoicing, the hour of the new canticle of liberation, the hour of exultation and of joy, the hour in which, after having let the hurricane loose for a moment on humanity, the all-powerful Hand of the Heavenly Father, with an imperceptible motion, will detain it and disperse and, by ways little known to the mind or to the hopes of men, justice, calm and peace will be restored to the nations.
". . . . suffering stands at the threshold of life."
Appendix I: Some Significant Statements of Pius XII, "The Prophets and Our Times" by Rev. R. Gerald Culleton