Brokenness, Evil and Hope

Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some . . .  in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street.    G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

    The reality of Evil is one of the great universals, one of the greatest facts of human existence.  The recent mass murder at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida is just the most recent reminder that there are always people who feel the need to visit inexplicable pain and suffering on their fellow men and woman.

The Temptation of Christ, Ary Scheffer

     Naturally, we want to find a solution, a way of stopping these things, and it’s certainly possible to offer better protection, at least, to some innocent people. There will be, as there should be, discussions of what public policy measures should be taken to protect innocent lives, and it is to be hoped that such discussions can help prevent or limit similar attacks in the future (a possibility that is more likely if such discussions are conducted in a reasonable and objective way, and don’t become a vehicle for exploiting the latest tragedy to push a political agenda).

     Even if we do find a way to offer more protection to school children, however, or come up ways to shield other vulnerable people, there will always be another Nikolas Cruz, and another after that, looking to inflict unprovoked, senseless wickedness on humanity at large.  The problem goes back to original sin, as Chesterton points out in the quote at the top of this post. No public policy or law can ever fully protect us from the murderous rages of our fellow men and other manifestations of moral darkness; the Evil will be with us until the last of us returns to our Maker, as it has been with us since our first parents first heeded the sinuous whispers of the serpent in the Garden of Eden.   

     Not that this is news: our fathers in faith knew it 3,000 years ago.  In Psalm 10, for instance, we see:    

            In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor;

let them be caught in the schemes which they have devised.

 For the wicked boasts of the desires of his heart,

and the man greedy for gain curses and renounces the LORD.  (Psalm 10:2-3)

Not only that, it is clear that the wicked often seem to get away with their misbehavior, and sometimes even appear to flourish:

His ways prosper at all times; thy judgments are on high, out of his sight; as for all his foes, he puffs at them.

He thinks in his heart, "I shall not be moved; throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity."  (Psalm 10:5-6)

To us fallen people in a broken world it does often appear that crime pays, and that vice is rewarded. It can leave us wondering what role a supposedly just God plays amid the carnage. This, in fact, is an argument often put forward by unbelievers (generally known as The Problem of Evil): if God is good and loving, why does he allow such horrible things to happen to good people?

     This argument makes a certain amount of sense, but only if we believe that this world is all there is. If the problem is something beyond us (such as original sin and the resulting loss of grace), it is only reasonable that the true solution lies beyond us as well, just as a God capable of creating this universe must necessarily operate outside and beyond it.  Psalm 10 looks to this God, not the strawman policeman god of the atheists’ objection:

Thou dost see [Lord]; yea, thou dost note trouble and vexation, that thou mayest take it into thy hands;

the hapless commits himself to thee; thou hast been the helper of the fatherless.

Break thou the arm of the wicked and evildoer;

seek out his wickedness till thou find none.(Psalm 10: 14-15)

     Of course, saying “it’s all in God’s hands” can sound like an evasion, an airy dismissal of brutally concrete suffering and injustice.  One of the reasons why pictures such as the photos of anguished parents and other loved ones that came out of Florida last week are so effective is that they put actual human faces on the tragedy; there are no corresponding photographs of Godly Wrath in the hereafter.  It is therefore all too easy for doubters to mock our prayers and dismiss altogether the reality of divine retribution.

Joel Auerbach/AP photo

     Sometimes, however, we can catch a glimpse of the bigger picture through the material clutter of this world.  For instance, I was especially struck by one in particular of the news pictures from the Florida high school shooting, a heart-wrenching photo which showed two anguished women embracing at the scene of the crime.  One of the women was distinguished by a large cross of ashes on her forehead.  The killing took place on Ash Wednesday, and the woman in the picture had quite clearly been to church that morning to “get her ashes” and to be reminded that she, along with the rest of creation, would someday return to dust.  The fact of our own finitude in this world and the ultimate destruction all our works is also part of the message of Psalm 10:

            The LORD is king for ever and ever;

the nations shall perish from his land.

O LORD, thou wilt hear the desire of the meek;

thou wilt strengthen their heart, thou wilt incline thy ear

to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed,

so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more. (Psalm 10: 16-18)

“The Nations”, that is, all that seems most solid and powerful in this world, “shall perish”, and “man who is of the earth” can strike his terror for a mere instant before he’s gone.  What’s really solid and powerful is The Lord, the Champion of the meek, the fatherless, and the oppressed, and he is “King for ever and ever”.  For that reason the ashes we wear on Ash Wednesday are a sign of Hope.  Along with the powers and princes and bullies of this world, the pain and suffering of this world will also turn to dust and be gone. 

     Even more, these Lenten ashes, palm ashes imposed in the Sign of The Cross, give us a reason for hope greater than the human author of Psalm 10 could know. These ashes remind us that the God who is above and beyond did more than just incline his ear,

but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. (Phil 2:7-8)

     The Cross points to the Infinite God who took on our limited humanity, and took all our pain and suffering on his own shoulders.  Not only does He truly accompany us in our misfortunes, He makes even the most horrendous of the injustices we suffer in this world a pathway of Grace, a path to Him. This is why we call those who suffer and die in his service martyrs, from the Greek word for "witness". They witness with their lives that God truly blesses us in our suffering.

     Again, the point is not that we shouldn’t work against particular manifestations of evil in this world.  It would have been a much better thing if the Florida shooter had been stopped, better still if he had never conceived the desire to destroy innocent life.  It’s just and appropriate for us to work to prevent such things from happening again.  The point is that we can never realistically hope to make this world a place completely free from evil: The Fall has given us a propensity to sin, and the father of sin will be with us until the end. Our true Hope lies in Heaven.

What's Up With Chocolate and Lent?

An earlier version of this Worth Revisiting post was first published 6 March 2016 . To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers see Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com.

To Give It Up Or Not . . .  

What’s up with the chocolate?  As I was driving home from work last week I passed a church with a signboard out front that said, “Lent: Give Up Chocolate, Not Hope.”  I kept thinking about it all the way home, both because I think the folks who put up the sign were trying to make an important point, but also because they were (inadvertently, no doubt) undercutting their message at the same time.  I had decided to to write about it, and took a picture of the sign Sunday on my way to an event at a Catholic church (not my parish church).  When I got to the church, as I was running through my thoughts on the first sign, I saw a second sign, or really a notice on a bulletin board in the hallway: “Don’t Give Up Chocolate For Lent.”  Hmmm . . . one tells me to give up chocolate, the other says the opposite. Well now, should I or shouldn't I? What's a person to do?

Lent Is A Season Of Hope

I should mention that the first sign appeared outside a non-Catholic Christian church, but I think that the good point it was making is perfectly catholic, that is, that Lent is a Season of Hope.  I don’t mean hope in the secular sense of the word, which often refers to little more than desperate wishful thinking.  Christian Hope is the confidence that, however bad things might be in the here and now, we know that Christ will triumph in the end.  The sacrifices and penances of Lent actually serve to reinforce that Hope, by helping us to detach from our hopeless reliance on the things of this world (pleasure, power, politics, money, and even family and friends - not to mention comfort foods like chocolate). In fact, the best sacrifice is when we give up something good, because even the best things in this world are insufficient. Our own best efforts are insufficient without God’s help. It’s no accident that God-Made-Man Himself was put to death through the cooperation of officials of the greatest religion and officers the most advanced government the world had yet seen; “Unless the Lord has built the house, they labored in vain who built it” (Psalm 127:1). The small austerities of the penitential season serve, at least in part, as a reminder that we don’t really need things, but we do need Christ.

Body And Soul

That’s where I think sign number one is in danger of sending a mixed message.  To my ears, at least, it sounds almost dismissive of the idea of sacrificing something concrete for Lent, as if it’s saying, “If you insist on giving up something go ahead, but it’s not really important; all that really matters is your interior disposition”.  Again, I don’t know if that’s what’s intended or not (one can only say so much on a roadside signboard); I certainly hope not, because while the interior disposition is the more important, the external action helps to form and direct it.  We are both body and soul, and as Christians we worship God made Man, so our faith is incarnational and sacramental. Unlike angels, who are pure spirit, we need to apprehend abstract realities through physical signs (I discuss this idea at greater length in a number of other posts, most fully in my post "Mozart, Herbert, John the Baptist, and Why We Can't Be Angels"). Therefore, giving up something without the proper interior disposition is pointless, but maintaining the proper disposition without reinforcement from the world of created things is, in the end, contrary to our nature, and therefore very difficult (which is why Jesus gave us a visible Church and Sacraments).

Maybe I Shouldn't Give Up Chocolate . . .

Here’s where the second chocolate sign comes in.  “Don’t Give Up Chocolate This Lent” is the slogan of Catholic writer Matthew Kelly’s “Best Lent Ever” program this year. His website explains:

Lent is the perfect time to form new life-giving habits and abandon old self-destructive habits. But most of us just give up chocolate. Then, when Easter arrives, we realize we really haven't grown spiritually since the beginning of Lent.

Lent is not just about giving things up, like chocolate. Lent is about doing something—something bold to become a better husband or wife, father or mother, son or daughter, friend, neighbor, etc.

I don’t think that Kelly is actually opposed to giving up chocolate per se: in his book Becoming the Best Version of Yourself, he relates (very powerfully) how he broke his own chocolate addiction, and uses that as an example of how we can let things other than God become our master. This is, in fact, the purpose of the tradition of Lenten sacrifice. In promoting The Best Lent Ever, however, Kelly is using the giving up of chocolate to represent something else: here it represents the very different problem of going through the motions of a nominal sacrifice without really experiencing anything deeper.

What's A Person To Do?

    It’s interesting that both slogans are using apparently contradictory messages to make the same (good and true) point: that giving up chocolate (or coffee, or watching sports, or whatever) is not enough, that truly experiencing what the Season of Lent is meant to teach us requires much more.  They both also have the effect of seeming to trivialize the value of such sacrifices. To be fair, Kelly’s program offers plenty of other concrete ways of living out Lent, such as daily meditations, inspirational videos, etc.  I suspect that the slogan was chosen since it catches the eye precisely because it is so contrary to expectations.  The problem is that many more people, unfortunately, will probably see the slogan than will look into the program. Let's hope it doesn't encourage people to forego Lenten sacrifices altogether.

    As I said before, what's a person to do? Perhaps there’s no way to fit the both/and nature of a good Christian observance of Lent into a catchy slogan. Is there some pithy way we can say “Lent: Give Up Chocolate to Remind Us That Our Hope Is In Christ Alone”?  Or, “Don’t Give Up Chocolate For Lent If It Doesn’t Help You To Grow In Christ”?  However that may may, chocolate is not the issue: we can, in good conscience, either give it up or not. Whether we participate in Matthew Kelly's well-received program or follow some more traditional Lenten devotion, however, we should observe this most important penitential season both in body and in soul: let's allow the Word to become Flesh in our own lives.

Last Sunday Before Lent: Vivaldi's Laudamus Te

This coming week we will begin the penitential season of Lent, during which we will not recite or sing the Gloria at Mass.  I thought it would be appropriate to post one last joyful snippet on this last Sunday before our Lenten journey begins on Ash Wednesday.

Vivaldi is known to have composed at least three different settings for the Gloria, from one of which the "Laudamus Te" below is taken. Aside from the curious impression that the two sopranos are singing from behind prison bars, this is a beautiful rendition.

Seen Any Miracles Lately?

An earlier version of this Worth Revisiting post was first published 29 February 2016 on the blog Principium et Finis. To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers see Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com.


Glory be to God for dappled things –

 For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

    For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

 Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

     And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

 Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

    With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

Praise him.       - “Pied Beauty”, by Gerard Manley Hopkins

God Is Everywhere

   Believing Catholics see the presence of God everywhere. We see Him (Who created all things and holds them in existence) even in things as ordinary as “trout that swim” and “finches’ wings”.  Sometimes, however, our Lord seems to speak to us through more extraordinary means, through the events we call miracles. The word "miracle" might first make us think of those dramatic Miracles formally recognized as such by the Church, as, for example, those entered as evidence toward the canonization of saints.  These are relatively rare, as the Church has very strict standards of evidence, and insists that there be no available natural explanation.  But there is also a steady stream of less well-attested occurrences in the life of every believer that may not meet the strict standards that official Miracles demand, but still serve as powerful reminders that God’s Providence surrounds us .  . . at least for eyes to see that can (even the greatest Miracles, as we shall see, are not enough to sway those who simply don’t want to see).

Miracles in the News

    I came across a couple reports of apparent miracles in today’s news, and they got me thinking.  First, there is this story about a Bible that emerged almost unscathed from a car that rolled over and burst into flame:

The burning car, the Bible that survived (firstcoastnews.com photo)

 The entire interior, except the Good Book, was consumed in flame (I also heard a report on Catholic radio of a similar occurrence in Brazil, in which a statue of Our Lady of Aparecida was found unscathed in a building that had been gutted in a fire, but I haven’t been able to find any news report about this case online).  Then there is this story, about one of the victims of a serial murderer in Kalamazoo, Michigan.  According to the original news story the 14-year-old girl was pronounced brain dead after she arrived at the hospital, and

the hospital was in the process of preparing her organs for donation when the girl squeezed her mother’s hand . . .

The mother then asked her daughter to squeeze her hand again if she could hear her, and she did . . . The doctor asked the girl to give a thumbs up if she could hear him, and she gave two thumbs up . . .

The hospital then immediately started prepping the 14-year-old for surgery, the lieutenant said.

The girl is in critical condition today, her family said in a statement, saying, "Our daughter’s prognosis is uncertain as she continues fighting for her life."

     The doctors have since claimed that there was never a formal declaration of brain death, so this case would not qualify as an official Miracle using the standards of canonizations or of Lourdes; nevertheless, it still seems to the family that the Lord has brought back to them a child who was gone.  In the case of the un-burned Bible, it could be that there is some natural explanation: perhaps there was something in the car’s interior that protected it  . . . although the article tells us it was simply on the front seat.  It is, at the very least, a nice reminder that God’s is present and active in our world.  Eugene McNiel, for instance, the Good Samaritan who rescued the driver of the burning car, has a very simple, straight-forward explanation for the survival of the Bible: “That is God.”  To which he adds: "You don't believe? (Then) I don't know what to say."

Seeing Isn't Always Believing

   Therein lies a curious fact about miracles great and small.  They seem most often to strengthen and reward the faith of those who already believe, or to encourage those who are willing to believe, but have not quite committed themselves.  Those who refuse to believe, on the other hand, can explain away even the most dramatic miracles.  A classic example is the case of the 19th century French novelist Emile Zola.  Zola was a sceptic who was particularly obsessed with the Shrine at Lourdes, where there had been a number of miraculous cures since the Blessed Mother had appeared to young Bernadette Soubirous there in 1858.  The writer went to the Marian Shrine where, as George Sim Johnston writes in Crisis magazine [full article here], he witnessed:

an 18-year-old girl named Marie Lemarchand who was afflicted with three seemingly incurable diseases: an advanced stage of lupus, pulmonary tuberculosis, and leg ulcerations the size of an adult’s hand. Zola describes the girl’s face on the way to Lourdes as being eaten away by the lupus: “The whole was a frightful distorted mass of matter and oozing blood.” The girl went into the baths and emerged completely cured . . . Zola was there when she came out of the baths. He had said, “I only want to see a cut finger dipped in water and come out healed.” The President of the Medical Bureau, Dr. Boissarie, was standing beside him. “Ah, Monsieur Zola, behold the case of your dreams!” “I don’t want to look at her,” replied Zola. “To me she is still ugly.” And he walked away.

Photo of the Grotto at Lourdes in the 1890's, crutches of healed pilgrims
can be seen hanging in the upper left corner of the picture.

Zola was more fortunate than most of even the most devout pilgrims: there have been less than one hundred officially confirmed miraculous cures at Lourdes in the past one and a half centuries (although there have been many more unconfirmed cures), and most visitors don't see even one of these. The unbelieving author, however, was allowed to witness two:

Zola subsequently witnessed a second cure at Lourdes, that of a Mlle. Lebranchu, who was suffering from the final stages of tuberculosis. He told Dr. Boissarie, “Were I to see all the sick at Lourdes cured, I would not believe in a miracle.” He put the second cure in his novel Lourdes (1894), but depicted the woman as relapsing into her former condition on her way home, the implication being that the cure was neither permanent nor supernatural, but rather a case of autosuggestion in an hysterical religious atmosphere.

But Zola, who remained in communication with the woman long after her recovery, was perfectly aware that there had been no relapse. When Dr. Boissarie questioned him as to the honesty of his account, pointing out that Zola had said that he had come to Lourdes to make an impartial investigation, Zola replied that he was an artist and could do whatever he liked with his material.

   Miracles have no effect on the Zolas of this world, because such people simply don’t want to believe; they fasten upon any possible technicality, and when all else fails they simply invoke the Science Of The Gaps defense: “Of course there’s a natural explanation, we just don’t know what it is”.  Scripture warns us that there will be intransigent blindness of this sort:

. . .  and coming to his own country he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, "Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brethren James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?" And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, "A prophet is not without honor except in his own country and in his own house." And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief. (Matthew 13:54-58)

Pass It On

   Those who have already given their hearts to the Lord, on the other hand, see his fingerprints everywhere, not only in the miraculous, but in every detail of creation (as described in Gerard Manley Hopkins’s Pied Beauty, above).   It may seem strange that God showers favors on those who, apparently, need them the least, but Scripture helps us out here, as well.  St. Paul says:

We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.  For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren.     (Romans 8: 28-29)

Any gift God gives us (i.e., Grace) is not for us alone, but is for us to share in our turn, for the benefit of others.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains:

Grace is first and foremost the gift of the Spirit who justifies and sanctifies us. But grace also includes the gifts that the Spirit grants us to associate us with his work, to enable us to collaborate in the salvation of others and in the growth of the Body of Christ, the Church. There are sacramental graces, gifts proper to the different sacraments. There are furthermore special graces, also called charisms after the Greek term used by St. Paul and meaning "favor," "gratuitous gift," "benefit." Whatever their character - sometimes it is extraordinary, such as the gift of miracles or of tongues - charisms are oriented toward sanctifying grace and are intended for the common good of the Church. They are at the service of charity which builds up the Church. (CCC 2003, my bold, italics in original)

Fr. Rob Lupo (Portland Press Herald photo)

The Son is the image of the Father and we are to be conformed to the image of the Son ( see Romans 12:2); God’s interventions great and small can help form us in that image, if we let them. Those who refuse to see more direct manifestations of God’s power are sometimes willing to recognize it reflected in his adopted sons and daughters, or are at least willing to be more open to it if they see that it has changed our lives.  It's often the case that people formerly hostile to the Church open their hearts because of the Grace they see in the lives of believers. Fr. Rob Lupo, for example, formerly an angry, anti-Catholic atheist, gradually let go of his hostility because of the example of a good Catholic friend, and today is not only a believer, but a priest in the Diocese of Portland, Maine [article here].  I’ve heard it suggested that perhaps even St. Paul himself was more ready to listen to the voice of Christ on the Road to Damascus after witnessing the faith and courage of the Christians he had been persecuting.

Miracles In All Shapes And Sizes

Most of us never witness first-hand the most dramatic miracles, but not all miracles are of the
dramatic sort. In his Summa Contra Gentiles St. Thomas Aquinas describes three different kinds of miracles [full excerpt here]. There are 1st degree miracles, truly miraculous events which are things which “nature can never do”, such as the miracle of the Sun at Fatima. God seems to reserve these for very special occasions.  2nd degree miracles are things which  “nature can do, but not in the same order”; someone who was dead coming back to life, for instance: it is natural for a human being to live, unlike the Sun dancing in the sky, but in the natural order of things we stay dead once we have died.  Finally, third degree miracles are

what is wont to be done by the operation of nature, but without the operation of the natural principles: for instance when by the power of God a man is cured of a fever that nature is able to cure; or when it rains without the operation of the principles of nature.

These are miracles, in other words, in which things develop in an apparently natural way, but whose course is determined by God. The 180 degree reversal in the life of former atheist Rob Lupo, who is now Fr. Lupo, is an example of a 3rd degree miracle.

    I doubt there is any one of us who hasn't had some experience of these 3rd degree miracles, the unlikely events that push us closer to God, or the seemingly impossible favors that follow closely after our prayer (this seems to happen to my wife a lot, most recently yesterday). We shouldn't be deterred by the fact others aren't persuaded; when Christ comes again in Glory I'm sure there will be some who try to dismiss it as a mass hallucination. Faith, however, tells us that God is constantly working to form us in his image, even in the smallest things: "He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him."