I was married at age 22 (my bride was 21). Both of us were believers and sought to ground our lives in the life of God. I remember that my wife was quite clear that “God had brought us together.” For a variety of reasons at the time, I chafed at the expression. I had a sense that God would bless our marriage, but that we were making our own decisions. Anything that impinged on my freedom was unwelcome. We did not argue the point (and so the marriage survived). We have now been married for nearly 49 years – and like so much else – I have to admit my wife was right. Providence is real – God works in all things for good. The mystery of such a statement is also real – which is to say that there are far more ways to misunderstand it than not.
In modern culture, we are very comfortable with the idea that things are “going somewhere.” We think of “progress,” and economic growth, etc. The root of such notions were borrowed from Christian tradition and “secularized.” Classical Christianity teaches that there is, indeed, movement and growth – a change that is taking place in all things. Creation is not static. However, modernity’s notions of “progress” (largely undefined) are a deviation from this teaching. Modernity has obscured the true doctrine of providence – God’s work in all things – leaving Christians at the mercy of business and politics.
I offer a couple of Scripture verses as a starting place in considering God’s providence:
St. Paul writes:
…“work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” (Phil 2:12-13)
And
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” (Ro. 8:28)
Both verses speak about things “working.” It is a word that has the same root as the divine “energies.” In both cases, what we see is a description of God working for our good – for our salvation.
It is possible to go yet deeper into this mystery. St. Maximus the Confessor wrote of three “incarnations” of the Logos (Word). There is the incarnation of the Word as the God/Man, the Word-made-flesh, Jesus Christ. There is the incarnation of the Word as “word” in the Holy Scriptures. There is also the incarnation within creation itself through the “logoi,” the “words” or “principles” that indwell all created things that are their purpose, their telos (end), and inherent drive. We can hear the sound of this “incarnation” in St. Paul’s description of creation “groaning like a woman in child-birth” as it waits for its final fulfillment in the revealing of the “Sons of God” (Romans 8:22).
St. Maximus described Christ as creating “from the Cross.” Thus the Crucified Christ shows forth the image according to which all creation is moving – it is the image of consummated love. St. Maximus says:
Until the end of the world Christ always suffers with us, secretly, because of His goodness according to [and in proportion to] the suffering found in each one. (Mystagogy, 24)
What we see in Divine Providence is not the divine management of a universe full of billiard balls. It is not the management of choice nor a making things behave in this way or that. It is not God’s impinging on the human will. Providence is “built-in.” It is all of creation moving, inexorably, towards the end for which it was created. All things work together towards that “good,” the image of the crucified and resurrected Logos. Christ resurrected is Christ crucified.
Fr. Alexander Schmemann famously wrote that, in the sacraments, we do not make something to be what it is not. Instead, we reveal something to be what it truly is. This is the very nature of a sacrament, and it is the very character of a sacramental universe. Baptized into Christ, we are “baptized into His death,” which is to say that we are plunged into the truth of what we already are. Christ, crucified, dead, and risen, is the image of what it means to be human. The human is the image of the whole of creation. St. Maximus describes being human as the “Microcosmos,” the universe in miniature.
In our own lives this “working within us to will and to work for His good pleasure” is not experienced as something alien or contrary to the truth of our existence. It is the truth of our existence. However, this experience is not accessed as a series of events – for the events themselves are not the stuff of our existence. Love is the ground of our being.
To have true, hypostatic (personal) existence, is to exist in communion – with God, with other human beings, with all things. Communion itself is the existence in and through love. Adam’s exclamation, “This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh!” is far more than a material proclamation. It is a declaration of love (and its definition) – that this “life of the other” is “my life” as well.
St. Paul describes this life-in-the-Other when he says:
“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”(Gal. 2:20)
“It is no longer I who live…” Of note is his grounding of this communion in the crucifixion of Christ. My suffering is His suffering. His glory will also be my glory. This is the mutual life that we know in the Eucharist even as we day-by-day come to know that everything at all times is the Eucharist – the Marriage Feast of the Lamb. The whole of creation is thus the unfolding in time of the life of Christ in all things. All things “work together for good” for they are the life of Christ unfolding.
Our thoughts on things like providence tend to be bound to linear history with notions of cause-and-effect. We have mental models that are simply inadequate for the reality of the life of grace. There are clues we tend to ignore. We are not told, “God loves.” Rather, we are told, “God is love.” And though the love of God is transcendent, beyond anything we can think or imagine, it is not beyond our participation.
St. Seraphim of Sarov famously said, “Acquire the Spirit of Peace and a thousand souls around you will be saved.” That acquisition requires our active participation in the life of Christ extending through all things. “Inasmuch as you do it to the least of these…you do it unto Me.”
Christ in us – the hope of glory.
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