Nineth of Year A - Evil & Suffering
June 2008
Today a few words about evil and suffering in the world and the mystery of God’s apparent powerlessness against it.
As the Catechism of the Catholic Church says ‘Faith in God the Father Almighty can be put to the test by the experience of evil and suffering. God can sometimes seem to be absent and incapable of stopping evil.’ It then continues. ‘But in the most mysterious way God the Father has revealed his almighty power in the voluntary humiliation and Resurrection of his Son, by which he conquered evil.’
This seems to be saying that responding to injustice, abuse or force, in kind, only strengthens the power of evil. While responding by voluntary submission and forgiveness weakens the power of evil and deprives it of nourishment.
Evil feeds on anger, retaliation and retribution.
Example: In the Gospel, when Jesus was being arrested, one of the disciples produced a sword to protect him. But Jesus said to him. ‘Put your sword back into its sheath. Do you think that I cannot call upon my Father and he will not provide me at this moment with more than twelve legions of angels?’
Example: When neighbours, especially next door neighbours, disagree about something, even something very small, and the attitude is ‘no way will I let him/her get away with that’ and they begin tit for tat reprisals against each other. the whole thing escalates into hatred and injury that can span years and generations. Evil feeds on evil and grows in strength and power until it cannot be overcome by the people involved.
Faced with voluntary submission and forgiveness evil loses its power eventually, although in the meantime it can wreak havoc, but its term is limited by the lack of response in kind.
If the response to evil is forgiveness and love, which is the greatness and power of God, then it faces total defeat, as happened in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from death.
The message of Jesus Christ Crucified seems to be that the weapons of evil are any kinds of abuse against persons or things. Reacting to this abuse with anger, force or retribution seems only to strengthen the power of evil.
On the other hand the weapons of God are forgiveness and love. These diminish the power of evil and eventually lead to its total defeat.
This, of course, is pure rubbish in the eyes of the world. It can only make sense where there is strong faith and belief in the goodness and power of God. It is something one sees or doesn’t see and no amount of argument on either side makes the slightest difference.
This battle between the power of evil and the power of God is being worked out every day in the lives of each one of us.