At the general audience in St Peter's Square on Wednesday, 30 April, the Holy Father's conference on Divine Providence was based on the biblical text Wisdom 9:9-10.

1. "I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth". The first article of the Creed has not finished revealing to us its extraordinary riches, and in fact faith in God as the Creator of the world (of "things visible and invisible"), is organically linked to the revelation of Divine Providence.

In our reflection on creation we begin today a series of catecheses whose theme lies both at the heart of the Christian faith, and in the heart of the person called to faith. It is the theme of Divine Providence, or of God who, as a wise and omnipotent Father, is present and active in the world, in the history of every creature, so that every creature, and specifically man, his image, may be able to live his life as a journey under the guidance of truth and love towards the goal of eternal life in him.

The Christian tradition of catechesis asks the question "Why has God created us?" Enlightened by the great faith of the Church, we repeat, whether adults or children, these or similar words: "God created us to know and love him in this life and to be happy with him forever in the next".

This extraordinary truth of God, however, which guides our history with serene countenance and sure hand, paradoxically finds a twofold and conflicting sentiment in the heart of man. On the one hand, he is led to accept and to entrust himself to this Provident God, as the Psalmist says: "I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a child quieted at its mother's breast" (Ps 131[130]:2). On the other hand, however, man fears and hesitates to abandon himself to God, as Lord and Savior of his life, either because he is perplexed by things and forgets the Creator, or because of suffering he has doubts about God as Father. In both cases Divine Providence is called into question by man. Such is the condition of man, that even in Sacred Scripture Job does not hesitate to complain before God with frank confidence. In this way the word of God indicates that Providence is expressed in the very complaint of his children. Job, afflicted in body and heart, says: "Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his seat! I would lay my case before him, and fill my mouth with arguments" (Job 23:3-4).

2. Indeed, throughout the whole of human history, whether in the thought of philosophers, in the teachings of the great religions, or in the simple reflection of the man in the street, human beings have not lacked reasons to seek to understand, or rather to justify God's action in the world.

There are different solutions and clearly not all are acceptable and none is fully exhaustive. From ancient times there have been those who appealed to blind and capricious fate or destiny, to blindfolded fortune. There are those who, in their affirmation of God, have compromised man's free will; or others, especially in our contemporary age, who think that the affirmation of man and his freedom implies the denial of God. These are extreme and unilateral solutions which at least make us understand what profound problems of life enter into play when we say "Divine Providence": how God's omnipotence is to be reconciled with our freedom, and our freedom with his infallible decrees? What will be our future destiny? How are we to interpret and recognize his infinite wisdom and goodness in the face of the evils of the world: the moral evil of sin and the suffering of the innocent? This history of ours, unfolding through centuries of events, of terrible catastrophes and of sublime acts of greatness and of sanctity... what is the meaning of it all? Is it an eternal, fatalistic return of everything to the point of departure with never a point of arrival, if not a final cataclysm that will bury all life forever? Or, on the contrary—and here the heart feels that it has reasons greater than those that its puny logic can provide—is there a Provident and Positive Being, whom we call God, who surrounds us with his intelligence, tenderness and wisdom, and guides "with a strong and gentle touch" this existence of ours—reality, the world, history, even our rebellious wills, if they consent to him— towards the "seventh day's" rest of a creation which has finally arrived at its fulfillment?

3. Here, on the razor's edge between hope and despair, we have the word of God to strengthen immensely our reasons for hope, that word of God, ever new though repeatedly called upon, so marvelous as to be almost incredible from the human point of view. Never does the word of God assume such greatness and attraction as when it is confronted with man's greatest demands. God is here, he is Emmanuel, God with us (Is 7:4), and in Jesus of Nazareth, risen from the dead, Son of God and our brother, God shows that "he has made his dwelling among us" (Jn 1:14). We can well say that the whole story of the Church in time consists in the constant and ardent search to find, to examine and to propose the signs of God's presence, guided in this by the example of Christ and by the power of the Spirit. For this reason the Church can, the Church wishes, the Church must proclaim and give to the world the grace and the meaning of Divine Providence, for the love of man, to rescue him from the crushing weight of the enigma and to entrust him to a Mystery of a great, immeasurable, decisive love such as God is. So the Christian vocabulary is enriched with simple expressions which constitute, today as in the past, the patrimony of faith and culture of Christ's disciples: God sees, God knows, God willing, to live in the presence of God, may his will be done, God writes straight with crooked lines... in short: Divine Providence.

4. The Church announces Divine Providence not through her own invention, however inspired by thoughts of humanity, but because God has revealed himself thus, when he revealed in the history of his people that his creative action and his salvific intervention were indissolubly united, that they formed part of a single plan decreed from eternal ages. Thus Sacred Scripture, in its globality, becomes the supreme document of Divine Providence, by manifesting God's intervention on nature by creation and his still more wonderful intervention by redemption, which makes us new creatures in a world renewed by the love of God in Christ. The Bible in fact speaks of Divine Providence in the chapters on creation and in those more specifically concerned with the work of salvation, in Genesis, and in the Prophets, especially in Isaiah, in the so-called psalms of creation and in the profound meditations of Paul on the inscrutable divine plans at work in history (cf. especially Ephesians and Colossians), in the Wisdom Books, so keen to find the sign of God in the world, and in the Apocalypse completely intent on finding in God the meaning of the world. In the end it appears that the Christian concept of Providence is not simply a chapter of religious philosophy, but that faith provides an answer to the great questions of Job and of all those like him. It does so with the completeness of a vision which, by favoring the rights of reason, does justice to reason itself by anchoring it in the more stable certainties of theology.

In this regard our path will meet with the untiring reflection of faith on the Tradition to which we shall opportunely refer, availing ourselves, within the sphere of the perennial truth, of the Church's effort to be a companion to man who questions himself ever anew and in new terms on Providence. The First and Second Vatican Councils, each in its own way, are precious voices of the Holy Spirit, not to be ignored but to be meditated on, not letting ourselves be frightened by the depth of the thought, but welcoming the life-giving sap of the truth that does not die.

5. Every serious question should receive a serious, well-reasoned and sound answer. For this reason we shall touch on various aspects of the single theme, by seeing especially how Divine Providence enters into the great work of creation and is its affirmation which places in evidence the manifold and actual riches of the divine action. From this it follows that Providence is manifested as transcendent Wisdom which loves man and calls him to participate in God's plan as the first recipient of his loving care, and at the same time as his intelligent cooperator.

The relationship between Divine Providence and human freedom is not one of antithesis, but of communion of love. Even the profound problem of our future destiny finds in divine Revelation, specifically in Christ, a providential light which, while preserving intact the mystery, is a guarantee for us of the Father's salvific will. In this perspective Divine Providence, far from being denied by the presence of evil and of suffering, becomes a bulwark of our hope, enabling us to perceive how it can draw forth good even from evil. Finally we shall recall the great light which Vatican II sheds on the Providence of God in regard to the evolution and progress of the world, taking up at the end in the transcendent vision of the growing Kingdom the final point of the unceasing and wise action of a provident God in the world. "Whoever is wise let him understand these things; whoever is discerning, let him know them; for the ways of the Lord are right, and the upright walk in them, but transgressors stumble in them" (Hos 14:9).