29th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A
First Reading: Is 45:1, 4-6
Second Reading: 1 Thes 1:1-5
Gospel Reading: Mt 22:15-21
“I am the Lord, and there is no other,” God says at the end of this Sunday’s First Reading. But in Isaiah Chapter 45, he goes on: “I form the light and create the darkness; I make well-being and create woe: I, the Lord, do all these things.”
Elsewhere he says, “It is I who bring both death and life, I who inflict wounds and heal them.” And, “Good and evil, life and death, poverty and riches, are from the Lord.”
All nature, insofar as it is nature, is good, as God said at its creation. However, it “did not spring forth complete” from his hands, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. “With infinite wisdom and goodness,” he “freely willed to create a world in a state of journeying toward its ultimate perfection.” In God’s plan, this process involves “both constructive and destructive forces of nature”: “physical evil” as well as “physical good.”
Our creator’s ways are as high above ours “as the heavens are above the earth.” If we questioned him, we could not comprehend the answer, for it would span all the history of the whole universe, from electrons to galaxies. He could only rebuke us as he does in Isaiah 45: “Dare the clay say to its modeller, ‘What are you doing?’” or in the Book of Job: “Who prescribes for [God] his conduct?”
With Job, we would have to admit, “I have dealt with great things that I do not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I cannot know,” and say, “We accept good things from God; and should we not accept evil?”
We must never think that God has to be excused for physical evil, like the COVID-19 virus. We must never even try to excuse him by suggesting that he cannot help it.
God does not relinquish his power to the so-called “laws of nature” as some people think. For example, after the 2011 Japan tsunami, one writer suggested that “the same God who allows free will to have its way, with both good and bad consequences, permits the processes of nature to unfold according to their own rhythms” even when they produce evil.
No; God gives “angels and men” freedom, says the Catechism, but not the physical world. On the contrary, his solicitude in guiding creation “toward its ultimate perfection” is “concrete and immediate.” He “cares for all, from the least things to the great events of the world and its history.” With all our science, the universe “remains wholly subject to him and at his disposal.” Nothing is hidden from him. “Nothing is impossible” for him.
Accordingly, St. Paul tells us to “give thanks to God the Father always and for everything,” not just when “everything’s going my way.” As the Church prays at Mass, “It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Lord.”
Sometimes we can see how God uses physical evil to save, test, teach, discipline, heal, or call us; to reveal himself to us and, through us, to others. But often we cannot.
“Only at the end, when our partial knowledge ceases, when we see God face to face, will we fully know the ways by which – even through the dramas of evil and sin – God has guided his creation” to its “definitive sabbath rest,” says the Catechism.
We may try to avoid physical evil (by lawful means). We may beg, as we do at Mass, “Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil,” or as Jesus himself prayed: “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by.” Like him, however, we must add, “If this cannot pass me by without my drinking it, your will be done!”
“Turn to me and be safe,” God says at the end of Isaiah Chapter 45. Ultimately, we can trust him for our happiness.
Father Hawkswell is again teaching “The Catholic Faith in Plain English” free of charge. All the materials (video and print) are available online at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. Session 7, “Prayer," will be available Oct. 18.