Gen 50, 20 God meant it for good

Genesis 50 (chosen pages)

(Gen 50, 20 ) God meant it for good

[20] Even though you meant harm to me, God meant it for good, to achieve his present end, the survival of many people.

(CCC 312) In time we can discover that God in his almighty providence can bring a good from the consequences of an evil, even a moral evil, caused by his creatures: "It was not you", said Joseph to his brothers, "who sent me here, but God…. You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive" (Gen 45:8; 50:20; cf. Tob 2:12 (Vulg.). From the greatest moral evil ever committed - the rejection and murder of God's only Son, caused by the sins of all men - God, by his grace that "abounded all the more" (Cf. Rom 5:20), brought the greatest of goods: the glorification of Christ and our redemption. But for all that, evil never becomes a good. (CCC 313) "We know that in everything God works for good for those who love him" (Rom 8:28). The constant witness of the saints confirms this truth: St. Catherine of Siena said to "those who are scandalized and rebel against what happens to them": "Everything comes from love, all is ordained for the salvation of man, God does nothing without this goal in mind" (St. Catherine of Siena, Dialogue on Providence, ch. IV, 138). St. Thomas More, shortly before his martyrdom, consoled his daughter: "Nothing can come but that that God wills. And I make me very sure that whatsoever that be, seem it never so bad in sight, it shall indeed be the best" [The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More, ed. Elizabeth F. Rogers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947), letter 206, lines 661-663]. Dame Julian of Norwich: "Here I was taught by the grace of God that I should steadfastly keep me in the faith... And that at the same time I should take my stand on and earnestly believe in what our Lord shewed in this time - that 'all manner [of) thing shall be well'" (Julian of Norwich, The Revelations of Divine Love, tr. James Walshe SJ (London: 1961), ch. 32, 99-100).