We heard
last week how, like a seed planted in the ground, God’s Word has a purpose and
accomplishes it, despite the various hindrances we encounter. According to Saint Paul, “all
creation groans” in expectation of the full revelation of God’s power: that is
to say, man’s personal struggles with knowing and choosing what is good are
matched by a sense of incompleteness and even treachery on a global scale.
My daily ministry has me encountering people in their worst
moments of physical pain and spiritual discouragement. The beds of Schuylkill
Medical Center, the beds of our nursing homes and many people's homes as well, are fields in which wheat and weeds are found together: human
beings, good creations of a good God, are afflicted with various ailments. In
their understandable impatience they wish He’d rip out every trace of the
ailment, but He doesn’t tend to work that way with that or much else.
The other
day a professed atheist shooed me away, wanting nothing to do with
“hocus-pocus” (which, by the way, is a corruption of the words of consecration
in Latin, “Hoc est enim Corpus Meum,” “For this is My Body”). He challenged me
for any sort of proof beyond this material realm, but at that point I didn’t
have the presence of mind or the patience to dialogue with him. It wasn’t the
time or place, anyhow.
While most of my audience shares with me a lifelong identification with Christ and the Church, I want to see where this man is coming from. God seems slow and
distant at times; the dispensation of His love resembles an IV more than a torrent. We might consider that slowness and silence to be a grand
disappointment. Although our all-powerful God enlists the help of human beings
in carrying out His wise, loving plan, many things lie outside of our
control—especially the behavior of other human beings who, like us, do not
always operate in a wise and loving manner. And then there are the calamities
that arise from weather, creatures, and so forth. When it comes to sickness and aging, however, the uncontrollable factor is the deterioration
of our mortal frame, and even there with an honest appraisal we find that we may bear some responsibility.
There is no
quick answer to the mystery of evil, whether it’s physical decay or moral
injustice. Our Catechism points out that the entirety of the Christian faith is
the response to that mystery. Insofar as God has created it, a person or a
thing is good. The old saying goes, “God doesn’t make junk.” He created the
human person with the ability to appreciate beauty, know truth, and choose
good—abilities which are divine in origin. We sin when we fail to exercise
those abilities, but God patiently has moved in the redemptive direction by
establishing covenants with us, chastising and consoling us by turns. The
sending and sacrifice of the Son in human flesh, the bestowal of the Holy
Spirit, and the establishment of the Church as the reliable vehicle for
salvation: finally these divine gifts demonstrate unending, unconditional love
that God commissions us to “go and do likewise” (Lk 10:37), to “pay it forward”
as we might say today.
In the myriad, mystical ways of His
Providence, the Lord brings good out of evil, even if we may not perceive it
this side of heaven. In faith, hope, and love, with courage, justice,
temperance, and fortitude, we persevere.
No comments:
Post a Comment