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God's Providential Hand at Work

Happy New Year!

Yes, I've been negligent in writing this blog, but it's not as if the readership is clamoring for more!

I like to see how God uses me as an instrument of His will. This has happened, yet again, in the strings of cause-and-effects that have resulted in the writing of this post. Today Thursday January 7, 2021 is the feast day of St. Raymond of Pinafort. I read a few cursory pieces of information on his life, which led me to try to find his seminal text Summa Cassum - on the topic of codifying the sacrament of Penitence, both for priests and the faithful. More on that below.

Following some internet links in trying to find a pdf version of Summa Cassum further led me to an article about St. Raymond asking St. Thomas Aquinas to write a defense of the Catholic Faith to help convert Jews and Moors, which in turn led me to bookmark numerous works by St. Thomas Aquinas.

But, back to St. Raymond's Summa Cassum. After the remaining two runoff elections, the American election is now officially over. There were two immediate and significant results from the extreme left-leaning Democratic Party taking control of the Presidency, Congress and the Senate for at least the next four years. First, the dramatic events that occurred yesterday on Capitol Hill, which were nothing short of a coup, a takeover of the government by President Trump's supporters. Secondly, the forthcoming no-holds-barred attack on the gift of life that will be led by Vice President Kamala Harris, the prosecutor doing the abortion industry's bidding in going after David Deleiden.

Bearing all this in mind, this morning I was struck by these comments on passages from the Summa, which I found particularly apt to the United States. Professor Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira discusses how St. Raymond, preaching the Word of God to cities ahead of a Cardinal's visit, wonders about the spiritual health of a community. He goes through several arguments and counter-arguments as to how one can ascertain the degree of faith in a community. Then he reasons:

Notwithstanding, there is a test that we can apply to know when a city or an epoch is in a state of grace, and it works very well.

When persons in the state of mortal sin are together, there are three possible degrees of evil that can result. In the first degree, there are simply those who are in mortal sin, and nothing further. In the second degree, there are those who are glad to be in mortal sin; they have antipathy toward those who are in the state of grace. In the third and worse degree, there are those who promote mortal sin; they are openly hostile to those in the state of grace; they hate those who are good. Among those who represent these three degrees a curious psychological phenomenon takes place: they instinctively form a front against the good.

The consequence is that in a city where many people are in state of mortal sin, good persons are not well-received. On the contrary, in a city where many people are in the state of grace, the good are very well-received.

In epochs when saints are the object of general enthusiasm, one can say that most of the population is living in the grace of God. On the contrary, in epochs when saints are persecuted, it can be said that most of the population is not in the grace of God. The way an epoch treats a saint is the way it treats God. Most of the inhabitants of that epoch reveal their position before God in this way. The saint is an image of God; whoever loves the image, loves God, and whoever hates the image, hates God. (https://www.traditioninaction.org/SOD/j163sd_St.RaymondPenafort_1-23.html)

There we have it. The United States of America can be judged by how well they welcome and treat God, and also by how much they revile God in their lives.

Let us pray that God's Providential Will has a chance to reveal itself to, and in, this nation.