Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
July 21, 2024
Today’s readings remind us that our God is a God of compassion. St. Francis de Sales frequently stresses God’s loving care for us especially in adversity:
Our God is the God of the human heart. When our heart is in danger God alone can save and protect it. Just as God is the maker of all things, so also God takes care of all things, and sustains and embraces the whole of creation. Consequently, God wishes to make all things good and beautiful. Especially then, let us believe that God watches over our affairs, even in adversity. We do not always know the reason for our trials, but we must admit that in our own affairs, we are sometimes the source of our afflictions.
While we must be careful and attentive to matters that God has committed to our care, we must not be anxious, uneasy or rash about them. Worry disturbs reason and good judgment and prevents us from doing well the very things we are worried about. Gentle rains make open fields fruitful in grain, but floods ruin fields and meadows.
Thus, undertake all your affairs with a calm mind and do them in order one after the other. If you try to do them all at once or without order, your spirit will be so overcharged and depressed that it will likely sink under the burden without achieving anything. In all your affairs strive quietly to cooperate with God’s plan for you.
God gives us a rich abundance of means proper for our salvation. By a wondrous infusion of God’s grace into our hearts, the Spirit makes our works become God’s work. Our good works like a little grain of mustard seed have vigor and virtue to produce a great good because they proceed from the Spirit of Jesus. You may be sure that if you have firm trust in God’s compassionate love and care for you, the success that comes to your work will always be that which is most useful for you and the believing community.
(Adapted from St. Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God, Introduction to a Devout Life).
