Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast,

where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us revealed in scripture and passed down

through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by

ascension in 365 days. We'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church discovering our identity in God's family as we journeyed together toward our heavenly home. It is Day 43. We're reading paragraphs 299-308. You guys, before we get started, I am using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the Foundations of Faith Approach. You can follow along, of course, with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Also, you can follow along with our catechism in a year reading plan. If you go to Ascensionpress.com slash CIY. And lastly, you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app to receive daily updates, daily notifications, and reminders that, hey, guys, today's day 43. We're reading paragraphs 299 to 308. I know I've said this for the last number of days, but it gets better and better. Our story. So here's what we're going to start with. Paragraph 299. We're going to hear that God creates an ordered and a good world. And this is so important that God creates an ordered world. Why? Because God himself is reason, right? God is reason itself.

And so it's not chaotic. It's not, it has an order to it, I guess, lack of a better term.

It's ordered and it's good. And this is very, very important. One of the articles of the gospel story is that God is good.

We've established that. We want to maintain that every step along the way. God is good and he made this world good. So important. Secondly, we want to note that God transcends creation but also is present to it. We talked about this before, but so God is outside of creation, right? Because he's larger than creation. He's more than creation. At the same time, he is present to every aspect.

From the greatest thing to the most minute detail of creation, he's present to it. So he's both

imminent, right? He's close to it and transcendent. Third, God upholds and sustains creation.

One of the things we know that, yes, through God, all things exist. Fourth, God all things exist, and in God all things exist. So from God and for God, right, the origin and the purpose, but also they stay in existence in God. So God is sustaining all creation. Now, these first main points, God creates an ordered and a good world, super important. He transcends

creation, is yet imminent to it. He's close to it. He's present to it. He upholds and sustains

creation. Then we're also going to talk to if we're going to pivot in paragraph 302 and talk

about the fact that God carries out his plan through divine providence. So we're going to talk

today about divine providence. Like, what is God's

will in this world? And it's going to be very, very important because we have not only the fact

that God is the primary cause, right? God is the primary cause of all things, but also that God

allows there to be secondary causes, real secondary causes in this world. What I mean by that is,

okay, there are things

that God does directly. He is the primary cause. He says, let there be light, boom, there's light.

He doesn't need any mediator. He doesn't need any other thing. Yet, God chooses to use secondary causes,

that is, other creatures, to assist in creation and the governing of the

universe. So he can make the stars and the sun just by breathing them into existence,

...