God is real. God is good. God is active in our lives.
A young priest from our local seminary shared these three simple
convictions at a retreat for young adults that I attended recently.
These statements may seem obvious but looking at the world around
us, and the manner in which many people live, I know why he thought they were
worth saying out loud. Many acknowledge God’s existence in the abstract, or his
involvement in great historical events, without recognizing his presence in
their everyday lives.
As the retreat progressed, I couldn’t help thinking about
generations of my religious family and the faith of Little Sisters in what we
call Divine Providence.
This year we are celebrating the 150th anniversary of our
congregation’s arrival in the United States. As I read through the historical
records of those early years — touching accounts painstakingly handwritten in
French in what we call our foundation books — I took note of the countless
references to Divine Providence.
Our pioneering Little Sisters had no prior exposure to America
and spoke little English. They arrived with few resources and set up house in
empty buildings. What they did possess was unlimited confidence in God’s loving
care. Of these early years in America, a journalist in Boston wrote, “They came
unheralded, with the very handsome endowment of 10 cents, and unlimited faith
in Divine Providence, under the patronage of the great and glorious St. Joseph,
in whose intercession they have unbounded confidence.”
Our foundation books speak of Providence in relation to all that
was materially necessary for the care of the elderly poor. In response to the
generosity of many good citizens in the early days of the house in Brooklyn,
the young superior exclaimed, “O Providence! Providence!” The Sisters in
Cincinnati recounted that when they contemplated all the gifts of Providence
they had received on their first full day in the Queen City, they were moved to
tears.
Our pioneering Little Sisters saw the hand of God active in less
obvious ways as well. When the first two Residents in Cincinnati demonstrated
their patience and willingness to teach the Sisters English, the Sisters saw
this as proof of God’s care. When two young Sisters died of typhoid fever just
weeks after the house in Pittsburgh was established, the city’s religious
communities rallied around the grieving community. The Little Sisters wrote
that God had used the tragedy to make their work known throughout Pittsburgh.
This insight of our founding sisters in Pittsburgh echoes the
words of St. Paul, “We know that all things work for good for those who love
God, who are called according to his purpose” (Rm 8:28). St. Paul’s words also
inspired Father Ernest Lelièvre, a French priest who served as the Little
Sisters’ ambassador to America.
To the fledgling communities scattered across the country he
wrote: “Who will separate us from the love of Jesus Christ? It is my formula in
all my pains, the balm for all my wounds, the remedy for all my sicknesses.
Worries, anxieties, troubles of soul … financial disasters, etc. for all this,
the love of Jesus Christ is the panacea ... The Lord is with you; that says
everything … Are you not his family, his people? Has not each of your homes had
proof, a hundred times over, of his predilection?”
Our pioneering Little Sisters certainly would have agreed that
God is real, that he is good and that he is always active in our lives, They also
would have concurred with the teaching of a contemporary catechism for young
Catholics: “At no point in time does anything that he has created fall out of
his loving hands … God influences both the great events of history and also the
little events of our personal life.” (cf. YOUCAT, n. 49).
Through all of the ups and downs of your daily life, as well as
in the unsettling social, political and religious circumstances in which we
live, may you find hope in remembering that God is real, and that he is always
active in our lives, willing the good of those who love him.
Sr. Constance Veit is director of communications for the
Little Sisters of the Poor.