God has a great plan also in what we call the unexpected. It isn’t unexpected to God! He planned it from all eternity. There is no happenstance in life, certainly not in the spiritual life. So often we say, “Oh, I didn’t expect that to happen!” Well God did.

We could think, “Oh, that is what caused everything to go wrong,” but actually that is what is supposed to make everything go right. There is nothing unexpected in all of creation.

There is a plan in what we would call the unexpected. Wasn’t the incarnation the most unpredictable thing that could ever have happened? God has His whole master plan for each of our lives, for the community, and for the church. We should delight to remember that nothing should ever take us by surprise, expect the wonder of God’s plan.

Our Lady was certainly not expecting the annunciation, and the whole plan of redemption was most unexpected to humanity: the whole idea of it, that the Father’s Divine Son, Himself God, should become a man, should be incarnated through the agency of this young, unknown girl in a city of which someone was to say, “Can anything good come out of that little place?” What was more unexpected? This was the whole plan.

+Mother Mary Francis P.C.C.

The post God of the Unexpected first appeared on AirMaria.com.

The agony and the crucifixion and the resurrection took place at precise moments in history, but they are also in God’s mind, where there is no past nor future; there is only the everlasting present. All our sins were present in the garden. Jesus saw our infirmities, our weaknesses, our little sufferings of futility, depression, frustration, lack of understanding from others and our own misunderstandings of others, and He said, as it were, “Oh if only I could take them on Myself.” And He did. He took them and he carried them. We should give those words back to Him and say to Him with our love and with our truth, “Oh, if only we could suffer it for You.” If we do, He will allow us to enter into the mystery of the Passion.

There is only one way for us to enter into the passion, and that is by way of compassion. This is why the Mother of God herself entered into the passion. She is the queen of compassion. She is compassionate toward us. She will teach us, she will lead us, because she is the Mother of Sorrows and the Mother of Joys: the Mother of Life. Each of our lives is meant to reproduce the passion of Christ not by bloody sweats, not by nails, but by suffering in these little unspectacular, unglamorous ways. This is our passion and it is only through this passion and this cross that we shall be brought to the glory of His resurrection.

+ Mother Mary Frances of Our Lady, P.C.C.

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