Monday, October 6, 2014

Where's God?

     I am reading a book in which one of the characters, a monk, who is devout and loves Our Lord, describes the murder of his family, their torture, and the torture he himself survived during wartime.  In his agony remembering their deaths, he sobs, "where was God?".  What a seemingly strange query to come from a holy brother in a monastery...

     This plea led to me to reflect on our current time.  We have hectic lives, fraught with busyness, financial hardship, and exhaustion, and we often feel alone, suffering.  The details of life cloud our perspective (because sometimes it really all comes down to perspective) and make our own selves the center of our gaze.  We have a skewed vision of what suffering really is, don't we...

     And then, thrown in to our busy lives, sometimes the terrible occurs.  There ARE sufferings.  Real sickness, real homelessness, real hunger, real terrorism, real disease.  Real death.  When we are (I am) focused on how long-suffering we are, what could be the result when Awful Things happen?  We are human beings.  Sometimes the result is "where was God?".

     In our frenetic stupor, how often do we step back and make it a point to unite all of our prayers, works, joys, and sufferings, in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world?  How often do we judge if what we are doing is pleasing and worthy to offer? How close do we keep Our Jesus, so that we may converse with him often?  How willing are we to praise His Holy Name in all things, for better or worse?  Do we contemplate his Sacrifice and know that our little crosses cannot compare? We are not little gods, and our suffering simply can NOT compare..it's united with his.

     By human standards, our real sufferings often feel like the worst thing that could possibly happen.  We convict Our Lord by saying, "a just, merciful and good God could not allow these things!", when in reality, because we have faith by reason, we should know that the opposite is true.  When we suffer, especially in cases of atrocities, don't we know that Jesus suffers there with us?  That he has the MOST compassion for what we endure?

     Bad things are coming.  There will be incredible trials for every single person on Earth.  I mean, it is going to be terrible.  We need to prepare, by making God present in all the things we do - the things that tax us, the things that hurt us, the small things that irritate us, and the everyday things we must go through, as well.  We need to make him real and here and keep Him the focus of all of our days. We need to know that His ways are not our ways, and trust Him in all that he allows, so that when dark times (really dark) we are not left to wonder, "where was God?".  We'll know that He is with us, even unto the ends of the earth..

     This world is not the end game.  Paradise awaits.  There is no greater mercy...

2 comments:

  1. I am so weak that I only let myself feel the crippling fear of this for a moment and then it's too much....

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    1. We are all so weak. that's why I love St.Peter so much <3 I do fear the great "what is to come", as well, but not with a terrorized fear. More like a heavy dread..

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