Saturday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time
The faith in the Providence
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat (or drink), or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they? Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span? Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin. But I tell you that not even Solomon … was clothed like one of them. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith? So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’ All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom (of God) and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides. Do not worry about tomorrow … Sufficient for a day is its own evil. Mt 6,25-34
Our friend Renata had to face a very sad experience. When we met her, many years ago, she was a person to whom the life seemed to have given it all: a profession as a teacher, a successful husband in the career and two beautiful children. But when Renata, serene and confident, began the third pregnancy, her husband announced that he would have gone to live with his secretary and she, after a few months, had to face, being alone, the problem to grow and educate three children. It began for her a very difficult period, which seemed to be endless. She struggled against the difficulties as a lioness for her cubs, but sometimes she passed through a crisis. One evening she fell into a deeper one and she came to our house, as she often was used to do, to find friendship, listening, some advice, but mostly a bit of prayer. That time, however, the hours were passing without the arrival of some help as we hoped, until we read the page of the today gospel, this powerful exhortation to indulge in the hands of the Lord, as “the birds of the heaven” and “the lilies of the field”. We sat in silence and we let the message come down slowly into the heart and, at some point, Renata felt that the Lord had spoken to her. When she went out to return back to her house, she was a regenerated person and since then she has always fully trusted in the Lord. She met many difficulties, but she has surmounted it all, and now that the sons are all graduates, she is enjoying a quiet phase of her life, with many moments of joy, shared with the old friends, among whom we also are.