Vigils Reading – 6th Day in Octave

THE ABSOLUTE GOODNESS

OF GOD

From a treatise by St John Eudes

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Our loving Savior, in various places in the Scriptures, assures us that he is

ever watchful over us, that we are and always will be in his most compassionate

care. How he carries us in his heart… In one place [in Isaiah] he even repeats it

five times in succession: Hearken to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of

the house of Israel, who have been borne by me from your birth, carried from

the womb; even to your old age I am He, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I

have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.

Elsewhere [in Scripture] he tells us the same thing in many ways.

Although, he says, it may sometimes happen that a mother can forget her child,

yet he will never forget us, and he has engraved us on his hands to have us ever

before him. Whoever touches one of us, he says, touches the apple of his eye.

Again, we should not be anxious about how we are going to get enough to eat or

wear, because he well knows our needs and takes care of them. He has even

counted the very hairs of our heads, and not one shall perish. He also tells us

that as he loves his Father so his Father loves us, and that his own love for us is

the same as his Father’s love for him. He wishes us to be where he is — that is, he

wishes us to dwell with him in his Father’s heart…

Let us beware of being dependent on the power or favor of our friends, or

on our own possessions, on our minds, knowledge, strength, good desires and

resolutions, prayers, or even on the faith we believe we have in God, or on

human means of any sort, or on anything in creation, but rely entirely on the

mercy of God. We should indeed use all these things I have mentioned, and

contribute in every way we can to the suppression of vice, the practice of virtue,

the carrying to completion of whatever God has entrusted to our care, and the

fulfillment of the duties which accompany our station in life. What we have to do

is to give up all tendency to rely on our own means, and put our trust in the

absolute goodness of our Lord. Therefore we must take as much care, and work

as hard, as if we expected no help from God, and at the same time regard this

work of ours as nothing, and put all our hope in God’s mercy.

This is what the Holy Spirit exhorts us to do, speaking through the mouth

of the King and Prophet David: Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and

he will act. And elsewhere: Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain

you. And in the words of Peter, the leader of the Apostles, the Spirit advises us to

cast all our anxieties on God, for he cares about us. Our Lord spoke the same

comfort to Saint Catherine of Siena: “My daughter, forget yourself and think of

me, and I shall never cease to think of you.”