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Question

Dear Father Angelo,

My name is Marco and I recently got to know you by reading the answers in your column. I want to tell you that I greatly appreciate this service of you and that I consider the people who can have you as a spiritual guide lucky.

I am writing to ask you which scope of intervention God has on the world in order to change certain situations.

I read that in creating man endowed with free will he had to limit himself, precisely to make room for “other than himself”. This has meant that the fate of the world is not only in the hands of God but also of all of us. We are in a certain sense called to share the destiny of the world with him.

If you agree with what I said up to this point, what margins of intervention does God have on the world?

Is it possible to justify in this way the fact that in various situations God seems not to intervene? (The famous classic question that everyone has asked in life)

Is it possible to attribute to man’s evil certain natural diseases that would seem independent of human actions? (…)

For now I stop and await your answer, hoping it will be possible to ask you more questions in the future.

I would love to get to know you personally but I don’t think it’s easily practicable.

Thanks again to you and to God for giving you to us.

I remember you in prayer,

Marco

Answer from the priest 

Dear Marco,

1. If creatures had an action space completely independent from God you would be right and you could affirm that God limits himself.

Actually, no creature moves from potency to act if God does not concede it to him.

2. Even those who do evil are supported and receive moment by moment strength from God.

Certainly he is not supported and does not receive the strength from God to do evil.

But by not fully accepting the strength that comes to him from God, he limits himself, he damages himself.

3. Even in this permission God always remains Lord, because in his omnipotence he would not permit evil except to draw forth some greater good.

4. We are often led to think of our action as parallel to that of God, forgetting that everything we are and can do, we can be and do only in God, who instant by instant upholds us in existence and gives us strength.

If there were not this action of him that sustains us in being and enables us to pass from potency to act, we would instantly vanish into the nothingness from which we were drawn.

It could be said that our action is to that of God as the light of the ray is to its light source.

By itself the ray is nothing.

So are we too.

5. In this way God always remains the absolute Lord who does not limit himself by granting freedom to others.

Indeed, with reference to us who are his creatures, He expresses even more his sovereign omnipotence.

6. Lastly, you ask me “if it is possible to attribute to man’s evil certain natural diseases that would seem independent of human actions”.

Not directly.

In an indirect way, that is, in the sense that man with original sin deprived himself of certain defenses, yes.

The defenses that man had before original sin consisted of some preternatural gifts that preserved him from death and pain.

7. I have omitted part of your email because perhaps we stray too far from the original question.

I wish you well, I remind you to the Lord and I bless you.

Father Angelo

Translated by Chiara P.