Day 6 (Dec. 2) - The Golden Thread & God Our Creator

The Golden Thread.

1. All through the long ages that elapsed from the promise to the coming of the Redeemer, a golden thread of light from heaven ran athwart their darkness. In the chosen people of Israel there ever prevailed a strong conviction of the coming of a Saviour, Who was to deliver His people from all sin and evil. It was handed down from generation to generation, and was again and again renewed by the inspired declarations of the prophets of Israel. Thus God in His mercy never leaves Himself without a witness to reveal to men of good-will the message of hope.

2. So through all the centuries that have passed since the coming of Our Lord, the Catholic Church has been the golden thread of light amid the darkness of heresy and heathendom. What a bright and glorious thread! What a contrast to all around! How it has, through God’s mercy, enlightened my life! How can I ever thank God sufficiently that, led by its divine light, I am traveling on in peace and safety to the heavenly Jerusalem!

3. So too there runs through the life of all those who are to attain at last to the eternal happiness of heaven a golden thread which never wholly disappears, even though their steps may wander far from the right path. Sometimes it is kindness to the poor; sometimes devotion to the holy souls; very often it is a reverence to the holy Mother of God that thus runs through the whole of life. In my life God has interwoven some such thread. Do I follow it up with grateful perseverance?

God our Creator.

Thou art worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power,
because Thou hast created all things. (Apoc. iv. n.)

1. Why is it that God has such an absolute and all-embracing claim to ourselves and to all that is ours? It is because we are made by Him, and not only made, but created. We are His not only as the statue is the sculptor’s and the picture the painter’s, but He made out of nothing the very materials of which we consist. There is therefore nothing in us which is not God’s. Every sort of excellence, strength, virtue, talent, beauty, skill, energy, affection — all are God’s, not our own.

2. God created every one with certain gifts of his own that He did not give to another, and He gave him those gifts to do a special work that God had for him to do. He created me with a certain object; from all eternity He had been planning my soul and body, and providing me with all that I needed, that both one and the other might serve Him. Have I on the whole carried out God’s plan? Shall I be able to say, when I come to die: “I have finished the work Thou gavest me to do”?

3. What a serious thought this is, that God had a plan for my life! He meant me to occupy a certain position in society and to have certain employments; to influence certain persons for good, to overcome certain temptations, to practise certain virtues beyond the rest, to attain a certain place in heaven. Has my life been ordered by God’s holy inspirations? has not my own self-will too often had part in it?

Pray that you may not fail of fulfilling God’s intentions concerning you.