God Wants to Transform Every Evil with His Love

5/07/2015 , , , , , , , , , , , , , 0 Comments

Recently in our Moral Theology class we have  been studying the problem of evil and how we can go about explaining how/why a good God could allow evil to exist in His creation.  In my Trinity Seminar we have been considering (guess what) the mystery of the Trinity.  In both these cases we have been able to make some headway into answering this mystery: for instance, when speaking about the problem of evil, logically, we can see how in our free-will we often choose the bad, we choose to hurt others, ourselves, or otherwise put something else as "god" in our lives, and thus, necessarily find ourselves incomplete.  In a similar way, we can come to some understanding of the Trinity: moving from the revealed truth of Jesus as the Son of the Father, who together promise to send the Spirit.  From here we are able to delve deeper into this mystery - God is one in substance and nature (this is what God is: perfect, eternal, infinite, etc.  The three persons are consubstantial in that they all have this same divine nature in its completeness), and, at the same time, God is three persons (this is, sort of, who God is: the three differentiated, not by differences in essence, but in relations of origin.  In other words, the persons are only differentiated by the relationships of love that they have with one another - the Father in giving Himself completely to the Son (perfect Father), the Son in totally loving and obeying the Father (perfect Son), and the Holy Spirit in being passively spirated by both of them (perfect Spirit)).  Obviously, both of these answers are unsatisfactory: "why doesn't God just eliminate evil?",  "but how are there 3 "parts" (so it seems) in one, perfect, unity?"
What I have realized this past week is that, though these mysteries remain because of our own weakness and limitations, it is into these very mysteries that God wants to enter and illuminate.  The trigger for this realization was a picture I saw on Facebook this past week.  The Sacristan at a church a couple hours north of my home-town found a host on the floor, and, as he should have, carefully preserved the host and notified the deacon, who placed it in a container of water.  This way, if the host was consecrated, it would dissolve, and could thereby be disposed of properly (and if it wasn't consecrated, no harm done).  However, when the Deacon came back a couple days later, assuming the host would have disintegrated completely, he found instead a mass of blood in the midst of the water. Eucharistic miracles aren't just medieval happenings, the result of over-active (or naive) imaginations of people "back then"!  

So, what do all these points have in common?  All these "things" - the presence of evil, God, and the Eucharist - are mysteries, they are beyond our limited understanding, but, in all of them, God wants to enter that mystery and drive away all that lacks His presence.  

Into evil God wishes to enter and transform with His love.  In the suffering of someone who has lost a loved one, God desires to fill their heart with the peace of His promise of eternal life to those who love Him.  To the person who has fallen into sin, God wishes to forgive that sin and "resuscitate" that soul, reinvigorating them with His joy and love once more.  To the hill of Calvary, where evil seemed to have its "greatest" victory, where the greatest physical pain, the greatest injustice, and the greatest abandonment came together: God is present, He became man just to enter that moment and prove once and for all the abundance, and omnipotence, of His love.  

What about the unknowns that we have about God?  He becomes man to bring us to that Truth, to Himself.  Why?  Because we are made in the image of God, we are meant  to become more like Him.  Our categories, our rational ways of explaining the Trinity, our analogies, aren't so much us getting closer to the truth regarding God - every analogy, falls hopefully short of the true grandure and awesomeness of God - but these thoughts aren't pointless.  Our drawing closer to God leads to our own fulfillment, our intellectual working towards the Trinity does get us to a closer idea of what we are supposed to be.  God shows Himself, as Father, Son, and Spirit, as perfect love in mutual, completely generous, relationships.  We are supposed to be that way too!  Augustine in his De Trinitate ("On the Trinity") looks inside of ourselves to catch of the glimpse of the Trinity, as it is in Itself.  He moves from (but retains) the "economic" idea of the Trinity that we find evident in the Scriptures (of the Father as creator, the Son as redeemer, and the Spirit as sanctifier), to a more metaphysical [read: essential] understanding of God.  He shows that just as our mind has memory, intellect, and will, and goes in that order: we remember something, think about it, and then decide to act in some way regarding it, so the Trinity has Father, Son, and Spirit.  Both sets of 3 work in an order (the Father eternally begets the Son, and from both of them the Holy Spirit proceeds), but the first "part" doesn't exist without the other; as soon as we remember something we think about it and act on it, as "soon" (eternally) as the Father exists, so does the Son and the Spirit.  So, this exercise does reveal something about God because He has revealed that we are images of Him, but our mental capacity is still limited, so we'll never understand the Trinity completely.  (We are always stuck, so to speak, looking at God from one "direction", either we see Him as one, perfect unity, or three, in the three persons, we can't quite wrap our head around the mystery completely).  End of story?  No!  Where God sees a lack of goodness (in this case, knowledge of Him), He wants to fill that lack with Himself, with His truth, with His love.  We are imperfect images of God, so, Christ comes as our savior and redeemer, to save and redeem us.  To reform us back into more perfect images of Him (and the entire Trinity).  Jesus not only directly reveals to us the truths of God, He also tells us to "love one another as I have loved you" (John 13:34).  This isn't just a moral commandment, this is a map to our true end, God Himself.  In Jesus' loving death for us, He redeems us, and in His calling us to the same sacrificial-love, He pulls us closer to God.  Recap: In our weakness itself, in our lack of imaging God, God wants to forgive us and make us again in His image.  In our lack of knowledge, Jesus comes to reveal more about God!

Finally, in the third situation, that of the Eucharistic miracle, God aids our all-too-often weak faith with a miracle making His presence obvious.  This is the case with all Our Lord's miracles: He not only heals the sick, and forgives the sinner (mystery 1: destroying evil), but He also does them to make obvious to us His divinity (mystery 2: revealing God) and showing His true, complete, incredible, presence in His sacraments, priests, and Church (mystery 3: Eucharist).  God is so good!  In the Eucharist miracle at Orvietto (which is a couple-hour train ride from Rome, and I will see for the second time at Corpus Christi), the priest was suffering from doubts about Our Lord's presence in the Eucharist.  Sometimes we have the same doubts!  "Lord, are you really there?  I can't see you."  Yes He is!  In that miracle, as in the one that took place a couple days ago in Illinois, the host - for all appearances a piece of bread - began to bleed!  He is truly there!

 Jesus looks at us poor doubting sinners with the same eyes of love that gazed on His apostles "O ye of little faith".  He wants to fill every place of evil, sin, doubt, or fear with Himself!  Trust Him, love Him, let Him!  Let our words be those of the centurion: "Lord, I believe, help my unbelief!"  Lord, we believe, but we fall, we doubt, we don't live up to your call - help us, transform us, have mercy on us! (And He does!)




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