Youcat commented through CCC. Question n. 50.

YOUCAT Question n. 50 - What role does man play in God’s providence?

(Youcat answer) The completion of creation through divine providence is not something that happens above and beyond us. God invites us to collaborate in the completion of creation.     

A deepening through CCC

(CCC 309) If God the Father almighty, the Creator of the ordered and good world, cares for all his creatures, why does evil exist? To this question, as pressing as it is unavoidable and as painful as it is mysterious, no quick answer will suffice. Only Christian faith as a whole constitutes the answer to this question: the goodness of creation, the drama of sin and the patient love of God who comes to meet man by his covenants, the redemptive Incarnation of his Son, his gift of the Spirit, his gathering of the Church, the power of the sacraments and his call to a blessed life to which free creatures are invited to consent in advance, but from which, by a terrible mystery, they can also turn away in advance. There is not a single aspect of the Christian message that is not in part an answer to the question of evil.  

Reflecting and meditating 

(Youcat comment) Man can reject God’s will. He does better, though, to become an instrument of God’s love. Mother Teresa during her lifetime strove to think in this way: “I am only a little pencil in the hand of our Lord. He may cut or sharpen the pencil. He may write or draw whatever and whenever he wants. If the writing or drawing is good, we do not honor the pencil or the material that is used, but rather the one who used it.” Although God works with us and through us also, nevertheless we must never mistake our own thinking, planning, and doing for the working of God. God does not need our work, as though he would lack something without it.

(CCC Comment)

(CCC 308) The truth that God is at work in all the actions of his creatures is inseparable from faith in God the Creator. God is the first cause who operates in and through secondary causes: "For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil 2:13; cf. 1 Cor 12:6). Far from diminishing the creature's dignity, this truth enhances it. Drawn from nothingness by God's power, wisdom and goodness, it can do nothing if it is cut off from its origin, for "without a Creator the creature vanishes" (GS 36 § 3). Still less can a creature attain its ultimate end without the help of God's grace (Cf. Mt 19:26; Jn 15:5; 14:13).    

(The next question is:  If God is all-knowing and all-powerful, why does he not prevent evil?)