It has been way too long since my last post. What I want to say today will be brief but hopefully edifying. At the beginning of the Year of Faith instituted by Pope Benedict I started a process of reading the entire Catechism from cover to cover. I have always known the Catechism is a wonderful resource. Even as an Anglican I turned to it to find answers to questions I had. But in my reading it from the beginning I have discovered already so much that I had not heard of before. For instance, you have probably heard someone say to you when something bad happens, "God can bring good from this." But this is not the fullness of the Truth. The Catechism states the following in §324:
The fact that God permits physical and even moral evil is a mystery that God illuminates by his Son Jesus Christ who died and rose to vanquish evil. Faith gives us the certainty that God would not permit an evil if he did not cause a good to come from that very evil, by ways that we shall fully know only in eternal life.
So the correct understanding is not that God can bring good from evil but that, if He permits evil to happen at all, He will bring good from it. Remembering this, especially after horrifying events like the school shooting that happened in Newtown, CT this week, can help us cope with such senseless tragedies. But let us not forget to pray for those who have lost loved ones from this awful event. More than likely, they will never see the good that can come from this until they enter into eternal life. May God have mercy on the souls of those who died and the ones they left behind.
The fact that God permits physical and even moral evil is a mystery that God illuminates by his Son Jesus Christ who died and rose to vanquish evil. Faith gives us the certainty that God would not permit an evil if he did not cause a good to come from that very evil, by ways that we shall fully know only in eternal life.
So the correct understanding is not that God can bring good from evil but that, if He permits evil to happen at all, He will bring good from it. Remembering this, especially after horrifying events like the school shooting that happened in Newtown, CT this week, can help us cope with such senseless tragedies. But let us not forget to pray for those who have lost loved ones from this awful event. More than likely, they will never see the good that can come from this until they enter into eternal life. May God have mercy on the souls of those who died and the ones they left behind.
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