TESTING OUR FAITH

I have a holy card at my place in the monastic choir where we pray the Liturgy of the Hours. The card says, in French, "Réjouissons-nous! Dieu prépare un monde nouveau."  "Rejoice! God is preparing a new world." 

Waiting for the vaccine.

I keep this card there all through advent each year. Our advent waiting and longing and preparing is to be done, we believe, in a spirit of rejoicing. But as the weeks go by, I've been looking at that card with an increasingly jaundiced eye. 

Rejoice during this advent time? Good luck with that! Eight-hundred thousand people in America alone have died from the corona virus, with the Omicron variant promising a new wave of sickness. Happy advent!

The town of Mayfield KY, Dec. 2021

Tornadoes have ripped through several states in the south, obliterating entire towns with names like Mayfield, Kentucky. Rejoice, folks! God is preparing a new world!

Any of us could easily add to this list of depressing reports of rising crime rates in our cities, people dying of starvation, and on and on.

In the face of all this misery, I sometimes stare at my holy card and ask myself how we're supposed to understand its joyful message, "Réjouissons-nous! Dieu prépare un monde nouveau."   

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If you are reading this blog, then chances are that you are not an atheist or an agnostic; but that doesn't mean that you aren't troubled by the presence of so much evil assailing us these days. As a person of faith, you already know that the meaning of your life does not lie on scientific, provable certainties, but rather in the world of mystery, a world that lies infinitely beyond the reach of your intellect.

Still, sometimes you and I find our faith shaken in the face of tragedies and evils. But I know you're not expecting this post to offer you nice definite answers to the problem of evil. What I can offer, though, are a couple of ways to thinking about the question. I hope they might be of some help.

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WHAT'S THE STORY?

First, instead of calling on science and reason in the face of horrible evils, try thinking in terms of the narrative that our Christian faith presents us with. The bible tells us that we are part of a single sacred saga of God's love, extending from before creation until the end of time. God's way of loving is often mysterious, and the story line seems to us to disappear from time to time. (Ask the Jews who experienced the holocaust.) Some people lose their faith as a result of these atrocities, feeling that the story of a Loving God makes no sense under the circumstances. The best you and  can do is be aware of the fact that our faith is itself a gift. 

THE CENTRAL SECRET

Second, The heart of the Story of God's love is "The Paschal Mystery." This central mystery of our faith includes not only the resurrection on Easter Sunday, but also what preceded it: the awful torture and crucifixion and death of our Savior on Good Friday. It's all one single "mystery:" Christ's suffering-death-resurrection. You can't separate them from one another. This means that to the eyes of faith, even the worst of evils in our own lives will one day be transformed by Christ's death and resurrection: Suffering is transformed in the means of salvation, defeat is transformed into victory, and death itself is transformed into New Life. 

Once again, no one can prove this to you rationally; belief in the transformative power of the Paschal Mystery is a gift. How come God doesn't give that gift to everyone equally? How come some folks are left behind, crushed under the weight of absurd evil in their lives? The answer is already contained in the notion of "mystery." It's a mystery why God distributes that gift the way God does. Once again, you and I cannot fathom God's ways by using our intellects.  

Trusting in God is clearly a question of a personal relationship: Do I trust God enough to believe that the evils around me will one day be transformed 9nto Salvation for the whole world?

A FINAL WORD

Third, started this post with a couple of French sentences. Let me finish with a fascinating verb I encountered when traveling in France. Several times I was asked, "Patientez, s'il vous plaît." I was struck by the way that French makes "patient" into a verb: "Would you kindly patient while we check our records." 

So, while God is "preparing a new world," let's you and I try to "patient" together, supporting each other when times are bad as we wait for the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ! 

"Réjouissons-nous! Dieu prépare un monde nouveau. -- Patientez!"