During the season of Lent this year, I thought it would be a good time to look at some prayers of the Mass that are rarely used or are prayed frequently and yet they have much to teach us if we would spend time meditating on them.

I’m going to begin with the Collect for the Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Ordinary time does not mean that nothing is going on, Ordinary Time just means that it’s not Lent, Easter, Advent, or Christmas. It is a time of spiritual growth. Between the years of 2018 and 2032, we celebrate the Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time only five times, in the years 2018, 2024, 2027, 2029, and in 2032.

There are 52 weeks in the liturgical year which begins with the First Sunday of Advent. Those are followed by the Sundays of the Season of Christmas. After Christmas we begin the 34 weeks of Ordinary Time, in which the weeks are celebrated numerically until we reach Ash Wednesday. 

The remaining weeks of Ordinary Time, are numbered backwards from the Sunday before Advent begins to the end of the Easter Season. If Ash Wednesday is early enough, before February 14, we will celebrate the Ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time.

As I prayed with this prayer, however, I found it to be a great addition to our Lenten devotion.

O God, whose providence never fails in its design, keep from us, we humbly beseech you, all that might harm us and grant all that works for our good. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.

Without looking it up, I defined God’s providence as God supplying everything for my needs, and I wasn’t wrong. However, providence means foresight. God supplies all my needs because He already knows what I need, He knew what was coming.

The Israelites, who seem to be a good example for lots of things, have much to teach us about God’s providence.

In the book of Genesis, Joseph’s brothers meant evil against him and sold him to the Egyptians. However, when famine came, his brothers had to go to Egypt to seek food and there they were met by their brother who told them,  “Even though you meant harm to me, God meant it for good, to achieve this present end, the survival of many people.” (Gen. 50:20)

Generations later, led by Moses, God brought the Israelites out of the slavery of Egypt. It was no accident that Moses was raised in the palace. If Moses had grown up with the slaves, he, too, would have had a slave mentality and would have not been the leader that was needed to lead God’s people to freedom. It was his vision of liberty and his sense of injustice that kept his fire lit to lead his people out of slavery.

It may seem like God did really big things in the Old Testament, but I believe that our little things are big things to God. If God knows the number of the hairs on your head (Luke 12:7), you can be sure that He cares about every aspect of your life, no matter how big or small.

He knows what is ahead of us, and not only does He know what we will need, He will already be there when we get there. His providence never fails in its design. His providence is always for our good.

I don’t know if Joseph thought about God’s providence while he sat in the pit his brothers threw him into. When Moses went from the palace to living in a desert, he had no clue that God would use him and his past in such a powerful way.

Nothing teaches providence like a parent with a baby. When they go on an outing, the child never has to worry about what the day may bring because their parent has packed  everything they could possibly need for the trip. It is the same with God. He knows what our day will bring and every morning He gives us a backpack with everything we need. Use everything in your backpack today because tomorrow, it will be refilled.