Our Time. Why We Are Born

Human life is a thread in a tapestry. It’s a piece of mica in a larger mosaic. Step back a little, and you’ll see that you are sewn in, inserted, built into a huge picture. This is Providence. You don’t understand yourself—why you’re here, why I am here. Why I was born in the 20th century, not the 19th? Then I would have studied chemistry with Mendeleev and poetry with Blok. Why wasn’t I born in the 17th–18th centuries? In a musketeer regiment in France, I would have served with d’Artagnan. Why wasn’t I born alongside Columbus? I would have sailed from Spain to Latin America to bring the natives to the faith. Why am I here, not there?

Because you are a small link in a huge picture. This is God’s Providence. You are the needed little glass shard—by color, by tone, by quality, by texture—inserted into one large painting. People usually understand this by the end of life. But it would be better to realize it earlier.