The whole of history revolves around the gratitude and ingratitude of the elect, hovering over them an extraordinary glory or blame for the course of humanity.
Newsroom (05/07/2023 09:00, Gaudium Press) When God decides to carry out His great interventions in history, the most marked and outstanding graces are not like the ordinary favours that He bestows on every individual every day, but the Creator elects some people who are sometimes even naturally shaped for the task to which He destines them.
In attention to the love that God nurtures for these people – even before He created them, because they represent, in His wisdom, a special role in the divine plans – whether by virtue of their own attitudes, or the correspondence or lack of correspondence of those called to pray and sacrifice for them, these people may be endowed with a force of impact on the history that carries it forward.
To use a military image, it would be like a war tank that advances on a wall and knocks it down, and can even cross a whole block in a straight line. These people are the military tanks of history. […]
There are two ways in which someone can demonstrate that they have a plan. One is to follow the straight course and get to the end. The other is, by crossing the worst and most varied obstacles, to head invariably in the same direction. This is a form of force of the plan. God combines the two methods, sometimes providing some with obstacles and then making them shine more brightly, almost as if they were the authors of the plan they have accomplished.
God’s plan, however, consists in deriving from the course of things – to speak in human language – a certain quota of glory. It is well understood that, since the Omnipotent created a countless number of intelligent and free beings, many of these creatures would do the opposite of what He wants. […]
The elect, in the sense in which the Chosen People were and the Catholic Church is, occupy a very important place in God’s plans, but the offences committed by them play a very great part in divine justice. The Creator is merciful towards them, but their sins especially offend Him and weigh heavily enough for Him to modify His plans.
So the whole of history revolves around the gratitude and ingratitude of the elect. Many of the sinuous, frightful signs in history, including the sinking or apparent collapse of institutions, are related to sins committed in the institutions themselves, which, according to their correspondence or non-responsibility to grace, are given a certain freedom by God to trace the plans of history, and an extraordinary glory or blame hangs over them for the courses of humanity.
Providence from time to time calls forth an avenger of the divine plans that have been mishandled, who is not necessarily the one who punishes, but the one who destroys the confusion. He then re-establishes the clarity of the course and souls move on.
There is, therefore, a whole game of faithful and unfaithful souls, including expiatory victims, who preserve or degenerate the institutions, and a whole of mercy and justice of which only God is aware. Then He goes about creating other souls, raising up vocations, giving graces to carry out a plan, because in His infinite goodness He has granted to some souls the honour of marking the course of history together with Him.
Extracted, with minor adaptations, from: CORRÊA DE OLIVEIRA, Plinio. History revolves around the elect. In: Dr. Plinio. São Paulo. Year XXIII. N.267 (Jun., 2020); p.21-23
Compiled by Sandra Chisholm
