Sacred Scripture and the life of the first Christian communities strongly testify to one certainty: God provides for the needs of his children. Divine Providence is attentive to human needs: “Lord, you search me and you know me...” (Ps 128); it cares for them in their small daily needs, all the way to the events of the world and history. It tells us that God is the Lord of history, he, and he alone, is its absolute sovereign. And it is precisely on this foundation that solidarity among Christians rests. This solidarity so deeply impressed the pagan world at the beginning of the Church that it recognized the Lord’s disciples by the way they loved and helped one another. Fraternal help, in fact, is founded on God and on his being the Father of all: giving and helping generously and freely, because the Father in heaven desires that his gifts, created for everyone, reach everyone.
Throughout the history of the Church, many saints have entrusted their lives and vocations to the arms of Divine Providence: Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Cajetan of Thiene, Vincent de Paul, Joseph Cottolengo... and it was precisely from these champions of love that a saint closer to our own time, Luigi Orione, drew inspiration for his Little Work of Divine Providence. John Paul II gives a precise and luminous portrait of him: “In Don Orione, priestly zeal was joined with abandonment to Divine Providence; thus, the secret of his existence and his many activities rested on an enlightened trust in the Lord, because ‘the last to win is He, Christ, and Christ wins through charity and mercy’ (Letters II, 338).”
