One thing that just about all of us struggle with is the mystery of suffering. Why do good people suffer? Why do innocent people suffer and pretty much everyone suffers. Why is that? Working with the sick I often heard people saying to me, ‘Why has this happened to me, I never did anyone any harm?’ People often wonder is it some kind of punishment from God because they did something wrong. That is not so. If that were so, then God would be vindictive and that is not who we believe God is. That is not who Jesus revealed God to be.
A lot of suffering is caused by the evil choices of other people. All the wars that are going on, which inflict such terrible suffering on innocent people, are caused by the evil choices of people. Why doesn’t God intervene? Because if He did, then we wouldn’t have free will. God has given us free will, but that comes with responsibility. Our choices have consequences for good or evil, but Jesus continually taught that God will hold us accountable for our choices. If He did not, then God would not be just.
So often in this world, the people who do wrong, who commit evil acts, get away with it, because of power and corruption. But they will not get away with it when they die. There is no hiding from God and I find that comforting. Is that something we should be afraid of? No, because God also offers us his infinite mercy. What is important is that we repent when we do wrong and ask God to forgive us.
Sal Magluta
I was watching a documentary about some of the first major drug smugglers in Miami in the 80s. Two men in particular, Sal Magluta and Willie Falcon became infamous for their smuggling. Part of the documentary interviewed Sal’s girlfriend who said that when Sal was younger, in his late teens, he often spoke about heaven and read the Bible. He was sure that as long as he repented before he died, God would forgive him and he would go to heaven. He took that to mean he could do anything, so long as he repented before he died. He was eventually caught and is still in prison today.
God forgives anyone who sincerely repents, but to presume that and then think that you can do what you want, is making a mockery of God’s mercy. We will all be accountable for our actions.
But there is also so much suffering which is not caused by people. Sickness and the death of young people for no apparent reason. How do we deal with that?
The readings today give an interesting kind of answer to this question. The first reading from the book of Job doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense on its own, but the background to it is this: Job is the just man, he represents all those who are just and try to do what it right, but then unexpectedly everything begins to go wrong for him. He loses all his property and money and even his children who are killed and then he becomes physically ill himself. Then some friends come to console him and begin a big discussion with him. They say to him, ‘You must have done something wrong or he wouldn’t be suffering so. In other words they understood it as a punishment for his wrongdoing. But Job stands his ground and says he hasn’t done anything wrong. This is how most of us react when things start to go badly wrong. We say, ‘Why is this happening to me? Did I do something wrong?’ God so often seems to be unfair.
Eventually Job himself challenges God and says, ‘You are in the wrong and You shouldn’t be doing this to me.’ At the end of the book, God answers Job and the answer that He gives Job is basically this: He says, ‘Who are you to question me?’ God says to Job, ‘Were you there when I created the universe? Can you understand all the mysteries of creation?’ What God is saying to us through this book is that we cannot understand these things, because they are beyond us, but the Lord asks us to trust him. At the end of the book everything is restored to Job.
Often God 'tests' us through suffering, not in the sense of seeing if we are good enough, but in the sense of making us stronger in our faith, just as you would push an athlete in training to make him or her stronger, or indeed the way you encourage your children to do something better, even though they may resist at first. You are helping them to grow. God is also helping us to grow. God does not want us to suffer, but God works through suffering. Of course we rarely see this at the time. Part of the suffering is that it doesn’t make any sense. We cannot see that any good could come from it.
What good could possibly come from my suffering? What good could possibly come from the execution and death of an innocent man on the cross? And yet look at what God did through the death and resurrection of Jesus.
I am sure that we will only make sense of much of what we go through, when we meet the Lord when we die. Then we will understand and we will see how everything fits together.
The Gospel relates to this too. When Jesus orders the wind and the sea to be calm, to the astonishment of the disciples, the forces of nature obey him. He is showing them and us that He is master of all things, even the forces of nature. The Lord knows what He is doing. All things are subject to God and so the Lord continually asks us to trust him. That is why He says, ‘Why are you so frightened? How is it that you have no faith?’ God is saying, ‘Of course I know what is going on, but you must trust me.’ None of these events happened by accident. All of them teach us something.
We often can’t explain the things that happen to us and we often won’t have good answers for those cynical, but it doesn’t matter. What we have to do is ask God to help us trust and believe that He is with us and that He knows what He is doing.
‘Who can this be? Even the wind and the sea obey him.’
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