The Fear of Suffering
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| (St. Mary's Basilica, Kraków - picture found here) |
In the domain of our personal lives, as in that of the
history of the world, we must be convinced, if we want to go to the limits of
our Christian faith, that God is sufficiently good and powerful to use whatever
evil there may be, as well as any suffering however absurd and unnecessary it may
appear to be, in our favor. We cannot have any mathematical or philosophical
certitude of this; it can only be an act of faith. But it is precisely to this act of faith that
we are invited by the proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus, understood and
received as the definitive victory of God over evil.
Evil is a mystery, a scandal and it will always be so. It is
necessary to do what one can to eliminate it, to relieve suffering, but it
always remains present in our personal lives, as well as in the world. Its
place in the economy of redemption reveals the wisdom of God, which is not the
wisdom of man; it always retains something incomprehensible. ...for My
thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord. As
high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are My ways above your ways
and My thoughts above your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9).
At certain moments in life, a Christian is necessarily
invited to believe in the contradiction of appearances and to hope against
all hope (Romans 4:18). There are inevitably circumstances where we cannot
understand the ‘why’ of God’s activity because it is no longer the wisdom of
man, a wisdom within our capacity to understand and explain by human
intelligence. Rather it is divine Wisdom, mysterious and incomprehensible, that
thus intervenes.
And happily we cannot always understand! Otherwise,
how would it be possible to allow the Wisdom of God to freely work according to
His designs? Where would there be room for confidence? It is true that for many
things we would not act as God would act! We would not have chosen the folly of
the cross as a means of redemption! But fortunately it is the Wisdom of God and
not ours that rules all things, because it is infinitely more powerful and more
loving and, above all, more merciful than ours.
While the Wisdom of God is incomprehensible in its ways, in
the sometimes baffling manner in which it acts in us, then let us say that the
Wisdom of God will also be incomprehensible in those things that it prepares
for those who put their hope in it. For that which it prepares surpasses
infinitely in glory and beauty that which we can imagine or conceive: What
eye has not seen nor ear heard, what the human heart has not conceived, what
God has prepared for those who love Him, this God has revealed to us through
His Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:9).
The wisdom of man can only produce works on a human level.
Only the Wisdom of God can realize things divine, and it is to divine heights
that it destines us.
This is consequently what must be our strength when faced
with the question of evil: not a philosophical response, but the confidence of
a child in God, in His Love and in His Wisdom. The certitude that Now we
know that God works in every way for the good of those who love Him and are
called in accordance with His plan (Romans 8:28) and the sufferings of
the present time simply don’t compare with the glory to come that will be
revealed to us (Romans 8:18).
~Jacques Philippe
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