THE GUIDING HAND OF GOD

Since Abel had his life taken by his brother’s hand, the loved chosen people of God would
never cease to suffer. This fact is central to the plot that goes along all Church’s history -
The Hebrews, from the sufferings in Egypt to the chronicles of the patriarchs. Job is a
biblical example of suffering despite his faith. Jesus Christ suffered deeply for mankind and
set the tonic that would reappear throughout the centuries with the Church Fathers, from
Saint Paul and Saint Peter to Saint Ignatius of Antioch and the early martyrs.

Saint Joan of Arc, an innocent girl from the countryside town that could neither read nor
write, became an army’s general that conquered France from the English and led the
coronation of Charles VII in Reims by the grace of God. Saint Thomas More was arrested
and decapitated for refusing to pledge his fidelity to Henry VIII, the many-wives king.
Edith Stein died in Auschwitz after living her faith and condemning the Nazi behavior
towards the Jews during World War II. Saint Pio of Pietrelcina was beaten every night by
the Devil and never stopped suffering. He had the stigmata - the bodily marks of Christ’s
crucifixion - which brought upon him scandal and calumny, yet he performed miracles
every day and never backed down before the destiny that befell him.

These people from all places and all times are part of the Catholic Church. People whom
their hearts await and seek the love of Jesus Christ. Through the lives of Saints, God
appears before us and remember us of his existence and his promises. The Holy Catholic
Church has incrusted in its history the blood, sweat and tears of God himself, Jesus, who
walked up the mount bearing his cross, and in his last moments, shouted to the sky,
according to the narrative in the Gospel of Matthew: My God, My God, why have you
forsaken me.

When I got out of the blinding blight of atheism to embrace the Catholic faith, I noticed this
constant guiding hand of God throughout history and scales fell from my eyes. It was the
retreat of Attila the Hun from Rome’s roads after he had spoken with the Pope Saint Leo
the Great. It was the temperance of the Cathedrals that survived the wars and destruction of
the centuries. It was the Church of the Templars Knights and their virtuous warrior code
written by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. It was the Church of the Inquisition and the
Crusades, which - by the lies of the enemies of Christendom – helped throughout the
centuries to put the Catholic Church in a bad light. It was the beauty of the stained glass,
the angelic gregorian chants and the profound philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. To sum
things up, it was the mystery and the power emanating from the doors of the Church, which
stood firm and faithful to the tradition inherited from the apostles that brought me back to
the house of God. Jesus said to Peter that he was rock, and on this rock he would build his
Church, and the powers of hell would never overcome it.

And the Church history should be the inspiring breath that we need to live and renew our
faith every day. We often get distracted or angry when something goes out of our control.
But only by acknowledging that life doesn’t belong to us, and that creation does not obey
the creature, and that at the last moment comes the dreaded end that destroys everything,
it’s possible to realize the guiding hand of God through all the hardships we have to endure.
Life does not belong to us, but it also does not satisfy us. We feel that life cannot be
something at random, a miscellaneous happening of uncontrollable events which would be
enclosed within its own events.

Only when the prodigal son stood alone in the world - eating and living on the mud with
pigs - he could retrace his life up to that point. He hadn’t the control he thought he had.
Only lying on the mud he would finally be able to look up to his father and remember that
he once had everything. As said Sertillanges: We are founded in God and lack the best of
ourselves if He is not there. Without God, life becomes a dreaded play of make believe until
its final end. In a world full of doubts, without an essential foundation which we can trust
with all our hearts, we eventually will find ourselves in the mud.

And this is the lesson that we should learn from the Church Fathers, with the saints and all
the members of Christ’s body that made the Church survive for more than two thousand
years, even when everything seemed to be crumbling apart. Everything we do is external
from the action. The meaning of cleaning the room is not within the act of cleaning the
room, but external to it, to achieve order. And the same is with life. Our souls search for a
meaning that lies beyond our existence. And that was the revolution of the Church in the
ancient World of Rome. Before Christ, religion served only for political purposes and to set
order in the material plane. All the gods, ancient heroes and legends would serve the
purpose of bringing material order to the limited human being in its own miserable
existence. But Christ brought us a kingdom that does not belong to this world, and took the
heavy burden out of our backs.

After they faced the Word of God made flesh, even destroying their earthly body would not
persuade the saints from leaving behind what satisfied their souls, and leaving behind the
house of Our Father in Heaven.

HÉLIO DE AMORIM E SILVA NETO