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If God is a good Father and creates a good world, why does evil exist? The Catechism addresses this profound and often painful question. Fr. Mike helps us understand how to reconcile sin, evil, and suffering with God’s loving Providence. He assures us that while God does not remove evil, he does redeem it, offering himself as the solution. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 309-314.
Click on the link to play video: https://youtu.be/Ha3Hsi15CQs
Together, with Fr. Mike, we explore the nature of God as Almighty. Fr. Mike discusses three important points to keep in mind about the reality of God’s power. The first is that God’s power is universal. God rules over everything; it is an infinite power. He is loving, he adopts us as his sons and daughters and shows us his mercy. Fr. Mike concludes with a reflection on God’s mysterious power in relation to the reality of the problem of evil and suffering in our world. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 268-278.
Click on the link to play video: https://youtu.be/n6MMrpNdEd4
“With regard to evil thoughts, there may be a twofold delusion. God-fearing souls who have little or no gift of discernment, and are inclined to scruples, think that every wicked thought that enters their mind is a sin. This is a mistake, for it is not the wicked thoughts in themselves that are sins, but the yielding or consenting to them. The wickedness of mortal sin consists in the perverse will that deliberately yields to sin with a complete knowledge of its wickedness with full consent. And therefore St. Augustine teaches that when the consent of the will is absent, there is no sin. However much we may be tormented by temptations, the rebellion of the senses, or the inordinate motions of the inferior part of the soul, as long as there is no consent, there is no sin. For the comfort of such anxious souls, let me suggest a good rule of conduct that is taught by all masters in the spiritual life. If a person who fears God and hates sin doubts whether or not he has consented to an evil thought or not, he is not bound to confess it, because it is morally certain that he has not given consent. For had he actually committed a mortal sin, he would have no doubt about it, as mortal sin is such a monster in the eyes of one who fears God that its entrance into the heart could not take place without its being known. Others, on the contrary, whose conscience is lax and not well-informed, think that evil thoughts and desires, though consented to, are not sins provided they are not followed by sinful actions. This error is worse than the one mentioned above. What we may not do, we may not desire. Therefore an evil thought or desire to which we consent comprises in itself all the wickedness of an evil deed.”
—St. Alphonsus Liguori, p. 142-143
//Catholic Company, 3/22/2022//
God resists our evil and conquers it with good, or how could God ask the same of us?! Think about that. God shocks and stuns us into love. God does not love us if we change; God loves us so that we can change. Only love effects true inner transformation, not duress, guilt, shunning, or social pressure. Love is not love unless it is totally free. Grace is not grace unless it is totally free. You would think Christian people would know that by now, but it is still a secret of the soul.
—from the book Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps by Richard Rohr
So, I will pose the great spiritual problem in this way: “How do we stand against hate without becoming hate ourselves?” We would all agree that evil is to be rejected and overcome; the only question is, how? How can we stand against evil without becoming a—denied—mirror image of the same? That is often the heart of the matter which, in my experience, is only resolved successfully by a very small portion of people, even though it is quite clearly resolved in the life, teaching, and death of Jesus… Both sides of this paradox are presented as inseparable—there is no life without death, there is no death without life. We call it the paschal or Passover mystery.
— from the book Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality by Richard Rohr, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
“He who is humble, even though he fall through frailty, soon repents with sorrow and implores the divine assistance to help him to amend; nor is he astonished at having fallen, because he knows that of himself he is only capable of evil and would do far worse if God did not protect him with His grace. After having sinned, it is good to humble oneself before God, and without losing courage, to remain in humility in order not to fall again . . . But to afflict ourselves without measure and to give way to a certain pusillanimous melancholy, which brings us to the verge of despair, is a temptation of pride, insinuated by the devil . . . However upright we may be, we must never be scandalized nor amazed at the conduct of evildoers, nor consider ourselves better than they, because we do not know what is ordained for them or for us in the supreme dispositions of God.”— Rev. Cajetan da Bergamo, p. 56-57
//Catholic Company//
“Often Jesus asks the sick to believe. He makes use of signs to heal: spittle and the laying on of hands, mud and washing. The sick try to touch him, ‘for power came forth from him and healed them all’. And so in the sacraments Christ continues to ‘touch’ us in order to heal us. Moved by so much suffering Christ not only allows himself to be touched by the sick, but he makes their miseries his own: ‘He took our infirmities and bore our diseases’. But he did not heal all the sick. His healings were signs of the coming of the Kingdom of God. They announced a more radical healing: the victory over sin and death through his Passover. On the cross Christ took upon himself the whole weight of evil and took away the ‘sin of the world’, of which illness is only a consequence. By his passion and death on the cross Christ has given a new meaning to suffering: it can henceforth configure us to him and unite us with his redemptive Passion.”—Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1504-05
//Catholic Company//
“You must ask God to give you power to fight against the sin of pride which is your greatest enemy—the root of all that is evil, and the failure of all that is good. For God resists the proud.”
— St. Vincent de Paul