Homily

I remember a poll that was taken in Britain at the height of the Covid pandemic and I found it fascinating. 67% of the people in Britain who claimed to be religious, said that they questioned their belief in God because of the pandemic. Which raises a question that is often brought up by atheists: If there is a God, how can He allow innocent people to suffer?

I understand that there are people of faith who sincerely ask this question, but I have always had trouble understanding why they do so. It seems to me that it depends on how you see God, and how you see God’s relationship to you.

God is God. He’s not some kind of powerful wizard living in the sky the way some atheists portray Christian belief. He is beyond and apart from all created things, not a part of the material universe. But at the same time, since He is the Creator of the material universe, He cares very much for all He has made. And if He did not sustain the material universe it would disappear into nothingness. He cares deeply for all He has made, and most of all, for us, who are made in His image and likeness. This is what Christians believe.

Scripture tells us something else about God and it does so in many places:

• Romans 11:34: “Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor?”


• Isaiah 40:13: “Who has directed the spirit of the Lord, or who has instructed Him as His counselor?”


• Isaiah 55:8-9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”

It’s true there is something of a mystery in why God allows suffering, like the suffering of the boy in today’s Gospel. And it is even more mysterious why those who are very innocent are allowed to suffer. But at the same time, we do not have to look further than to our Lord, Jesus Christ, the most innocent man who ever lived, Who Himself suffered greatly for our sake and our salvation. And this too was by the plan of God, a plan we also cannot fully understand and completely understand.

We either have to say that God is uncaring, unloving, unjust because He allows suffering, or we believe that God has a loving purpose in allowing suffering, even though we may not see that purpose, because we are not God. It seems rather arrogant for me to say that God must act the way that I see fit, and it seems to me very egotistical to say that my ideas about what God should do are better than God’s own plans.

When a young child is injured and his parents take him to the hospital for treatment it can be very frightening for that child. The treatment itself can seem scary and sometimes it is briefly painful as well. The child rebels and cries and begs to be left alone. No amount of explanation will help because the child cannot understand that this treatment will help him get better. In a similar way we are often not capable of truly understanding the role of suffering in our lives or the lives of other people. But surely we must understand that the Lord is not uncaring or unloving. He is not the author of evil. So there must be some good in His plan that we do not see, that we do not understand, and like the suffering Job, we who accept good from God should also be willing to accept troubles in this life.

I think this is really more of a problem for people in modern, Western societies than for the Christians in Rome that St. Paul was writing to. We have enjoyed periods of great peace and prosperity and I think this has led many people to believe that this is what our lives are all about: to enjoy the good life as we see fit, according to our own understanding. We can see this way of thinking has overtaken so many people in our own country. Health, wealth, and pleasure have become the greatest values in life. When it appeared that the Covid virus was threatening those values, it is no wonder some people began to question their belief in God.

Think of all the sufferings of St. Paul as he preached the Gospel: beatings, whippings, imprisonment, hunger, thirst, shipwreck, execution. And yet he never questioned the love of God and never shrank away from proclaiming that love until his death. He deeply experienced the love of his Lord, and so he understood that this Lord would not allow him to suffer harm unless there was a purpose behind it. He even tells us he begged the Lord to take away what he called “a thorn in the flesh” but the Lord did not do so. St. Paul says that Christ told him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” Paul trusted in those words.

Like St. Paul, we should always pray that the Lord remove our sufferings and the sufferings of others, as the centurion did in the Gospel today. The Lord has told us to do so. But even as we pray, we must pray knowing that God will always do what is best for us.

Health, wealth, and pleasure. The three goals that so many Americans today struggle to achieve as the most desirable elements of life. But our goals must be different than these. Our goals are to love the Lord God with our whole mind, our whole heart, our whole soul, and our neighbor as ourselves. These are the goals of a life in Christ. Let us continue to worship, pray and work to achieve these blessed goals, because we do not live to enjoy heaven on earth, but instead we live on earth as people who are traveling to heaven.