FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT (CONDUCT TO SPEND HOLY LENT from Rnd Father AVRILLON)
When you wake up, thank Divine Providence for all the help you have received since you came into the world: humbly ask it to continue and increase it. Make frequent returns to Her during the day through Acts of Faith, Trust and Abandonment. Enter, with a Spirit of Faith, into her adorable designs for you, and convince yourself that she orders everything that happens to you for your Good and for your Salvation.
MEDITATION
1st POINT: Join yourself in Spirit to the people who follow Jesus Christ, and who do not bother where they can find something to eat and drink. Abandon yourself like him to his Divine Providence; and if your abandonment is perfect, Jesus Christ will rather do a Miracle than let you lack what is necessary. Infidelity against Divine Providence is in the Spirit, when we do not fear it, when we do not respect it; it is in the Heart, when we do not adhere to it, when we do not love it and when we secretly revolt against it; in actions, when we act as if there were no Providence.
All creatures, says Saint Augustine, are mute preachers of Providence, and we carry tangible proofs of this within ourselves. Let us only reflect on God's conduct towards us, and we will agree. The perils that we have avoided, the certain help that has never failed us in our most pressing needs, the resources that we have found in our spiritual and temporal miseries, are proof of this.
Jesus looked up at the people who followed him, and said to Philip, Where shall we buy bread to feed all these people?
2nd POINT: Adore, love Divine Providence, which burst forth today in the solicitudes of the Heart of Jesus Christ, and in the Miracles of his Hands, which are their dispensers. His Adorable Eyes, which he raised over this people, were the Faithful Interpreters of his Heart: He is Touched, and the Solicititude of a God so Good and so Powerful must exempt us from having excessive solicitude. He asks, he inquires tenderly, although he knows well that he only had to delve into the Treasures of his Providence to find something to satisfy this people. Finally He performs a Brilliant Miracle; and with five barley loaves and two fish he fed two thousand men abundantly: seeing our miseries, feeling them and helping us, it is the same thing for him. What consolation for us to be able to surely, in our needs and in our sorrows, throw ourselves with confidence into the Arms of Divine Providence, and to be sure of never being rejected or abandoned!
What do you fear? Has this Helpful Providence abandoned any of those who implored it with confidence? Did she abandon the three children in the furnace of Babylon? Did she abandon Young Moses exposed on the waters? Joseph in his prison? Job on his dunghill, and Daniel in the lions' den?
FEELINGS
Divine Providence, Powerful Dispenser of all Goods, I adore You, I love You, I place all my trust in You: I return You a Thousand Thanks for Your Benefits, and I ask You for forgiveness for my ingratitude, for my distrust and my alarms about the future. Lower Your Eyes, Lord, on my miseries, open to me the Entrails of Your Mercy, Feed me with this Heavenly Bread of Your Divine Word, and make me worthy to feed myself often with this Substantial Bread of Your Body and Your Blood, which will lead me to the Celestial Stay that you have promised to those who love you.
SENTENCES
People of the earth, trust in the Lord, hope in Him, pour out your Hearts in His Presence, because He is our Eternal Protector (Psalm. 6).
Divine Providence does not even consult the desires of the Righteous, when it escapes them for temporal goods, because it prepares for them much more Precious Goods in Eternity (D. Hier. Epist.)
REFLECTIONS
Preference of Barrabas
Pilate , wishing to save Jesus, put him in parallel with Barabbas, the most wicked of men, in whose death all the people should be interested. What an odious comparison, O My Savior! Ah! that the Prophet was right in saying that the children of men are false and liars in their judgments! Let's see which of the two will prevail, the criminal or the Innocent, the homicide or the Savior. Oh my God! the cries of the people decide against You; Your blood will be shed, you will die. What a humiliation! What ignominy for a God of Majesty to be thus the opprobrium of men, the object of the contempt and fury of an entire insolent populace; to be placed below the most corrupt and scoundrel of all men, and to be destined to a shameful and cruel death.
PRAYER
Hear our Prayers, O God of Mercy! and do not despise the tears of sorrow that we shed over our sins and our miseries. We. let us adore your Divine Providence in our sorrows, since it only sent them to us to exempt us from the tortures of the other life. Lord, soften them with the Consolation and Anointing of your Grace and Your Love. We renounce any other sensible consolation, happy if You are with us in our sorrows and in our tribulations! We pray to you through the Merits of Jesus Christ Your Son, Our Lord.