Tag Archives: Mercy

Hope and the Mystery of Evil

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Atheists, at least those who are honest, often cite the problem of suffering as their main obstacle to believing in God.  They reason that if there is a loving God, then there wouldn’t be so much suffering.  A believer may counter with the burden of free will, but that really only accounts for the moral evils in this world.  What about the natural evils, those like we see in the wake of hurricane, where suffering and death seem to be everywhere?  The problem facing the believer is how he can explain a mystery, that is the mystery of evil, to one who does not yet have faith.  And so, the unbeliever goes away with only more reasons for disbelief.  But if we are to give them reasons for belief, then we must be willing to dive into this question a little more deeply.

Evil and suffering are, as we said, a mystery.  The word mystery comes from the Greek word mysterion which literally means closed.  Mysteries, at least in the sense we are using it here, are closed to the rational mind.  The human mind, unaided by revelation, can not even conceive of the mystery.  Once it is revealed, it becomes intelligible, but the light of full understanding cannot be seen.  The mystery of evil is one such revealed truth that, absent the gift of divine faith, is completely incomprehensible.  No amount of reasoning about suffering and evil could ever bring us to the point where we could conclude that “all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).

Hope and the Desire for Justice

Even if we could intellectually assent to this truth, it remains elusive because it is also the foundation of the theological virtue of hope.  Like faith, hope is a gift and not something we can earn.  It resides in the will and acts like a holy fortitude that enables us to habitually cling to the truth of God’s Word even in the presence of manifold evils.    It is in “hope we are saved” (Romans 8:24).  At every corner, the believer is tempted to despair, that is, to give up on the fact that God always fulfills His promises so we should not be surprised when the unbeliever, who lives without these supernatural gifts, finds no seeds of hope in this world. 

Lacking supernatural faith and hope, it would seem that the unbeliever’s ears remain permanently closed to any possible theological explanation.  It only seems that way however when we ask an important question.  Why is it that the unbeliever expects things to be otherwise?  The answer, once it is uttered, turns the issue on its head.  What makes evil and suffering so bad in the mind of the unbeliever is that it appears to be indiscriminate; favoring, if anything the guilty more than the innocent.  Peeling back a layer of his thoughts he will find that, like all men, he has an innate desire for justice.  This desire, even if it is unacknowledged cannot be stamped out.  He finds within himself a fundamental paradox—”there is no God and yet I expect justice.”

Every true desire that we have has an object.  We experience hunger and there is food, we experience loneliness there are companions, we desire knowledge, there are things to be known.  We could go on and on listing our desires and find that each matches to some object.  Justice however remains mostly elusive.  We certainly believe there is an object, or else all the political machinations in which we try to create a utopic paradise are pointless.  But those objects have proven to be woefully inadequate.  It is reasonable then to expand our horizons. 

This line of reasoning is not unlike CS Lewis’ argument from desire, except that it points towards an event—the Last Judgment.  The Last Judgment, the moment when Christ comes to judge the living and the dead, will be first and foremost an event of justice.  Every injustice will be set right, every wrong righted, everlasting crowns given to those who suffered injustice and everlasting shame to those who doled it out.  The judgment of history will be corrected and “the last shall be first and the first shall be last.”  Justice will be served. 

The Final Judgment as a Beacon of Hope

In short, the desire for justice is meant to serve as a signpost pointing towards the truth of eternal life.  Pope Benedict XVI calls this “the most important motive for believing in eternal life” in Spe Salvi, his second encyclical:

There is justice. There is an “undoing” of past suffering, a reparation that sets things aright. For this reason, faith in the Last Judgement is first and foremost hope—the need for which was made abundantly clear in the upheavals of recent centuries. I am convinced that the question of justice constitutes the essential argument, or in any case the strongest argument, in favor of faith in eternal life. The purely individual need for a fulfilment that is denied to us in this life, for an everlasting love that we await, is certainly an important motive for believing that man was made for eternity; but only in connection with the impossibility that the injustice of history should be the final word does the necessity for Christ’s return and for new life become fully convincing.

Spe Salvi (SS) #43

Following this line of reasoning a little further, we see that the unfulfilled desire for justice in this life becomes a beacon of hope for the next.  It is according to God’s Providential design that justice will be lacking in this world precisely to spur our desire for the next.  Revelation then becomes the venue where desire meets object.  The heart testifies and Revelation answers.

Based on this view, the Pope wants us to correct our view of the Final Judgment and see it in the light of the Good News.  “The image of the Last Judgement is not primarily an image of terror, but an image of hope; for us it may even be the decisive image of hope” (SS, 44).  When we see it as part and parcel of the Good News as a response to man’s universal longing for justice, its evangelical power can be unleashed.

The Keep Fit Sacrament

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What do you call the Sacrament by which we confess our sins to a priest and through the power given by Christ to the Church, he offers us absolution?  Very often, you can learn a lot about someone by the answer they give.  Someone who wants to emphasize the positive aspects of the Sacrament will call it “The Sacrament of Reconciliation.”  Those who go regularly tend to call it “The Sacrament of Confession.”  And then those who have more legalistic tendencies call it “The Sacrament of Penance.”  Yet the Church refers to the Sacrament using all three terms and she does so in order to highlight something very important about the effects of sin and the power of the Sacrament.

While sin is first and foremost a transgression against the law of God, its effects always lay in three dimensions.  First it alienates us from God and thus we need the Sacrament of Penance to correct this.  Second it separates us from our neighbor and therefore there is a need for Reconciliation to reunite with the community.  Finally, by sin we ultimately harm ourselves and therefore the need for Confession to accuse ourselves before our conscience.

Interestingly enough, it seems that in today’s climate the emphasis is on calling it Reconciliation even though we often fail to see how our sin hurts the Church.  We’ve all heard that there is no such thing as a private sin, but we do not really understand how this is so.  It might be easy to see how a mortal sin cuts you off from the Church, but what about just a tiny venial sin (if such a thing exists)?   Why is reconciliation necessary?

Looking at what we actually forfeit when we commit a venial sin makes it clearer.  Each time we fall, we deprive ourselves of sanctifying grace.  But this is not just about our own personal holiness.  As members of the Church, we have an obligation towards the other members of the Church to be as holy as possible.  Each grace that we forfeit is a grace that God intended for everyone to benefit from.  By not being as holy as we should be, we deprive others of the grace that we were to be channels of.  In fact not only do we have an obligation, but the other members of the Church have a right to demand we be as holy as we should be.  This is why petty jealousy has no room in the Church—the holier each other member is, the holier I will be.

This is what makes the image of the Church as the Body of Christ so instructive.  When an organ is not as healthy as it should be, then it hurts the whole body.  It even hurts the functioning of some of the other parts as well.  An organ that is healthy adds to the health of the other members.

To remain healthy, organs need continual nourishment.  This comes to the members of the Mystical Body through the Eucharist.  But nourishment is not enough to maintain optimal health.  Our organs also are prone to decay and need tonics in order to remain healthy.  So too the members of the Mystical Body need to regularly receive the tonic of frequent confession in order to remain healthy.  How can we receive this tonic fruitfully?

With this background in mind, Pope Pius XII in his encyclical on the Church, Mystici Corporis Christi, recommended to the faithful the practice of frequent confession.  Speaking specifically against those who said there is no benefit to the frequent Sacramental confession of venial sins he said “[T]o hasten daily progress along the road to virtue we wish the pious practice of frequent confession to be earnestly advocated. Not without inspiration of the Holy Spirit was this practice introduced into the Church…By it genuine self-knowledge is increased — Christian humility grows — bad habits are corrected — spiritual neglect and tepidity are countered — the conscience is purified — the will is strengthened — a salutary self-control is attained — and grace is increased in virtue of the sacrament itself” (Mystici Corporis Christi, 88).

To be clear, if you are conscious of having committed mortal sin (or even if you are questioning whether it is or not) then you should go to Confession immediately.  But what the Pope is advocating is frequent confession as a means to fight venial sins and climb the heights of sanctity quickly.

This obviously requires a paradigm shift.  Many of us (perhaps because of a bad experience or our own hang-ups) look upon Confession as a wholly bad thing, rather than a holy good thing.  We should see the Sacrament of Confession as a positive thing rather than as something to be dreaded.  All Sacraments are encounters with the Risen Christ and therefore we should not fear to encounter Him there.  There is necessarily some shame because sin is always shameful, but that shame is healthy.  It can also be offered to the Sacred Heart for the shame and humiliation of being scourged and crowned with thorns.  We also should experience some nervousness.  Who wouldn’t be nervous coming into the presence of the One Who is Goodness to accuse ourselves of failing in our own pursuit of goodness?  But both these quickly are washed away in the Blood that is poured over us during the words of absolution.

confessional

It is also worthwhile to highlight some of the benefits that Pius XII mentions.  So often we fall into the trap of thinking that the Sacrament is merely about accusing ourselves before God.  But that is truly a small part of it where frequent confession is concerned.  In fact for the Sacrament to be valid we need only confess a single venial sin for which we are sorry.  Instead the focus ought to be to stir up contrition.  Contrition is the sorrow of soul for sin committed and a firm purpose not to commit it again and grow in the virtue of penance.  By the sacrament our wills are strengthened and our purposes of amendment firmer.  This all comes from the grace of the Sacrament.

This is also why we should not grow discouraged when we continually have the same sins to confess.  Each time we confess it, it makes our contrition more perfect.  This is what makes Confession such a beautiful gift.  It is impossible for us not to commit sin in this life (Council of Trent) but it is possible for us to have perfect sorrow for those sins we do commit.  If it is true that “there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than the righteous man who is in no need of repentance” then we know that the God of Mercy takes great pleasure in bestowing the gift of contrition upon us.

It was mentioned that you need only confess a single venial sin (again assuming no mortal sin) in order for the Sacrament to be valid (meaning all our venial sins are absolved, confessed or not).  This leads to another important thing to consider in drawing the optimal fruit from the Sacrament as to what we should confess.  We should not come to the Sacrament with a laundry list of sins, but instead those faults that we are actively trying to conquer.  This is warfare 101.  Our enemies, the world, the devil and the flesh, will never be conquered if we fire scatter shot over their lines.  Instead, like every good soldier in battle, we should take a divide and conquer approach.  Once we have conquered the dominant vice and replaced it with its opposing virtue, we can then move on to the next one.  Included in the things we should confess as well are things that we are particularly sorry for and those things that we had previously conquered and have moved back into our lives.  Even the sins of our past life that have already been confessed but still hold some appeal to us can be material for confession.  Again, if one of the fruits is to stir up contrition then we can more fully express our sorrow for those sins.

This brings up one final point and that is the necessity for a methodical approach to our daily examination.  We should focus on one thing in particular and see how we did for the day.  Then we can look at the rest of our day.  Writing what we discover down in a small notebook will enable us to see our patterns more clearly and also give us the material to make a good confession next time we go.  Unless you have not been in a while or are making a general confession, we should avoid using Examination of Conscience material found in prayer books.  All too often this leads us to examine someone else’s conscience and not our own.  As Pius XII mentioned with the fruit of increased self-knowledge that comes from regular confession we will also be able to examine ourselves better.

In closing, let us all take advantage of this Keep Fit Sacrament and invoke the aid of St. Gemma Galgani for a good confession this weekend:

My crucified God, behold me at Your feet. Do not reject me, a poor sinner, as I appear before You. I have offended You much in the past, my Jesus, but in the future I resolve to sin no more. My God, I put all my sins before You.  I have considered them and realize they do not deserve Your pardon. But I beg of you to cast one glance upon Your sufferings and see how great is the worth of that Precious Blood that flows from your veins. My God, at this hour close Your eyes to my want of merit and open them to Your infinite merits. Since You, dear Jesus, have been pleased to die for my sins, grant me forgiveness for them all, that I may no longer feel their heavy burden, which presses me to the earth. My Jesus, help me, for I desire to become good, no matter what it may cost. Take away, destroy, root out completely all that You find in me that may be contrary to Your holy Will. At the same time I beg You, O Jesus, to enlighten me, that I may be able to walk in Your holy light.