Father directs and
governs everything. "Providence," says St. John Damscene, "is the will of
God, by which all things are fitly and harmoniously governed,"(96) and
such is its power that nothing can elude or deceive it, neither can it be
hindered or baffled in any way. "For God will not except any man's person,
neither will He stand in awe of any man's greatness; for He made the
little and the great, and He hath equally care of all."(97)

And just as divine Providence disposes and governs all the events of life,
directing each to its proper end, so the divine Will is the cause of
everything that exists. Just as it is impossible that anything should
escape God's knowledge and directing hand, so is it impossible that
anything should exist or come into being without the direct intervention
or permission of His will. There is nothing in the world which God has not
made, and nothing takes place which is not according to His good-pleasure,
except the malice and guilt of sin. Even all the other evils of life, such
as sickness, suffering, disease, poverty, cold, hunger, thirst, and the
like, God actually and positively wills. And precisely because these
things proceed from His will, they cannot be bad. God is the author of all
good, and evil He cannot do. So good, indeed, is He that, if He were not
sufficiently omnipotent to draw good out of evil, He would never have
permitted any evil to exist. "God has judged it better," says St.
Augustine, "to work good out of evil, than to allow no evil."(98) We must
not argue in our foolishness and try to understand all the doings of God,
for His ways are not our ways, His thoughts not our thoughts.(99) It is
often beyond our power even to understand our fellow-creatures, and how
foolish it is to complain because we cannot comprehend the great Creator!
Enough for us, if we be sincere and right of heart, to know, as we do,
that God is good, that He loves us individually, and that His protecting
hand guides and governs all the events of our lives, even to the smallest
detail. These are truths which we must take hold of and lay close to our
hearts, else we shall go the way of error and issue in ultimate disaster.

And from these truths, so certain and unquestionable, it further follows
that everything existing in the world, so far as it affects us, everything
that falls to our lot, all that we encounter, all that we suffer, all that
we do, aside from sin, has been purposely arranged by Almight