God is everywhere and sees everything, being the comfort of the just, and terror of the wicked
3 min • Digitized on September 21, 2021
From St. Joseph’s Life, Virtues, Privileges, Power, page 364
By Very Rev. Archdeacon Kinane, P.P.
Twentieth Meditation.The Sanctification of our Ordinary Actions.
The Presence of God.*St. Joseph, the Model of the Sanctification of Ordinary Actions by the Practice of the Presence of God.
“Walk before me, and be perfect” (Gen. xvii. 1).
“All the days of thy life have God in thy mind” (Tob. iv. 6).
“I remembered God and was delighted” (Ps. xxvi. 4).
“I have set the Lord always in my sight” (Ps. xv. 8).
Reflect that the practice or habit of the presence of God follows close upon purity of intention, or is a part of it, and is one of the best means to sanctify our ordinary actions.
Let us realise the great truth that God is everywhere present, that His Divine eye is ever upon us, that He sees our inmost and our most secret thoughts.
How beautifully the Psalmist expresses it: “If I ascend to heaven thou art there: if I descend into hell, thou art present. If I take my wings early in the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea: even there also shall thy hand lead me: and thy right hand shall hold me” (Ps. c. xxxviii. 8).
"The spirit of the Lord hath filled the whole earth” (Wisd. i. 7).
“Do not I fill heaven and earth, saith the Lord?” (Jer. xxiii. 24.)
“God,” says St. Paul, “is not far from every one of us. For in him we live, move, and be” (Acts, xvii. 28).
God is everywhere within us, and around us. In God we exist, walk, think, and live. God is present within us, and equally present in the most remote fixed star, countless millions of miles distant. All created space is but a point in the infinite Immensity of God.
God sees us! His eye is ever upon us. The presence of God is an awful terror to the wicked.
To sin, to indulge his guilty passions, the wicked may seek the darkness and the lonely spot.
But there the eye of God is upon him; before God there is no midnight, but eternal mid-day. Not only does God see the sinful deeds of the wicked man, but each and every sinful secret thought is known to God, and noted down in the book of eternal death.
God sees us, His eye is ever upon us! If this truth be so terrible, as it is, to the wicked, it is the joy and consolation of the just man.
Not only does God see our good acts, both public and private, but our secret thoughts, and good holy intentions and desires, are known to the Almighty, and will be rewarded by an eternal weight of glory.
Though we fail in a thousand things, though we are not a tenth as good as we ought to be, yet it is a consolation in this vale of tears to know that a tender merciful God sees our temptations, our struggles, our ardent desires to serve Him, and to see Him loved by the whole world. “I remembered God,” said the Royal Prophet, “and was delighted.”