            <div id="father_cummings_title">Father Cummings Homilies</div>
            <div id="father_cummings_excerpts">Excerpts</div><br/><br/>
            <div id="father_cummings_homily_title">Following God's Plan in Our Lives</div>  

            <div class="frcummings_content_paragraph">
                <p>Our lives 
                    are part of a story, a true story, written by God. <i>He chose us in Him 
                    (Christ) before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and 
                    blameless before Him. (Eph. 1.4)</i> Just as salvation history, the inaugurating 
                    and building up of the Kingdom of God in time, has a goal towards which 
                    it is inexorably moving and is therefore a story which makes sense, which 
                    has an ending, a truly dramatic but ultimately happy one, so also the 
                    life of each Christian is a part of that story. We have a role to play 
                    in that great drama. Our lives, too, are stories written by God, with 
                    a point, a happy ending. If we live according to other rules than those 
                    that God has written on our heart, we will not be happy. Likewise, He 
                    has a plan for each of us, and if we set other goals we will not be happy. 
                    We cannot disrupt the script for the overall story, but we can make our 
                    own role a tragedy. </p>
                  <p>Every event 
                    that comes into our lives - no matter how small - no matter apparently 
                    a result of chance - and no matter how much a product of free decisions 
                    by human agents, cannot come into our lives without the Divine Script 
                    Writer having put it there. That is the great consolation. The story definitely 
                    involves heartbreaks. It is filled with crosses. Each one is carefully 
                    planned by the Author of History, measured out to our capacities and accompanied 
                    by sufficient helps to carry it. If we knew all the crosses that are in 
                    our personal scripts, we would never get out of bed in the morning. God 
                    hides the future from us mercifully, <i>Therefore do not be anxious about 
                    tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble 
                    be sufficient for the day. (Mt. 6.34)</i> </p>
                  <p>When one 
                    embraces crosses, one finds that they had been prepared for them all along. 
                    God wrote the story. Our example for a successful life is Christ Jesus. 
                    We must embrace willingly, even eagerly, the sufferings of each day. No 
                    matter how petty, even if they be just splinters of the cross. If we do 
                    not, we not only fail to fight with Christ and to obey our Father, but 
                    we diverge from the truth of our lives. If we spend our life fleeing crosses, 
                    we do not live the role that fits us. We will be playing the complaining, 
                    frightened, bitter, lazy part, instead of the heroic lead that we are 
                    all called to. We are all called to be saints remember. Our only interest 
                    must be: What is your will, O God? Like Jesus who came into the world 
                    saying: Lo, I have come to do your will, O God! </p>
                </div>