4th Sunday--Suffering is not from God: from God comes the way of Peace

Why does our Good God permit suffering?
I don’t know if anyone paid attention, but this week was the 70th anniversary of the closing of Auschwitz Death Camp and a reminder of the horror of the holocaust, and how Jews, slavic peoples, mentally disabled, gays, seventh Day adventists and many others were exterminated by a government.
This week we received more reminders of the brutality of war and the plight of refugees.
This week we were reminded of the slaughter of infants through abortion.
I know people are hurting;  cancers, depression, lack of decent housing.
People are having their hearts broken by friends and family.  People are lonely.  People are so filled with violence.
Why does God permit this suffering?
God does not permit suffering, nor does God will it.  
We permit it.  We will it.
God has revealed the way to peace; we don’t seem to follow it.
We still seem to follow the way of ego; we are more concerned about my stuff, my money, my way of doing things.  Me being right!
We let our fears get to the best of us.
We do not try to exercise any restraint on our desires.
So we poison our water, our food, our air and in the name of profit...and we cause devastating sickness.
We refuse to share our blessings...so others starve, have poor paying jobs, lack affordable housing.
We are self-involved, so “liberated”  that inconveniences like babies, like our mates, friends don’t mean anything and we casually drop them from our lives so that we can do what we want.
We so insist that it be “MY WAY” that we will destroy our families to have it “My WAY”.
We cause so much hurt to ourselves and to others.  What do we do, we blame others, we Blame God
This is NOT the Kingdom of Heaven.
God is NOT punishing us by all of this
God is NOT even testing us is not testing us through this.
God so loved the world that he sent the beloved Son to save the world
And even after the world crucified and murdered the Beloved Son, God the Father raised him from the dead and he came back to us.  
A Sign of God’s infinite love.
A Sign of God’s forgiveness and mercy.
The Sign that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
The Beatitudes are the beautiful, but incredibly powerful awareness that the way of our sins only brings suffering.
The Way of God brings true inner peace.
The Way of giving our faith to God, not earthly powers, nor political system.
The Way of mercy, forgiveness and compassion.
The way of humility and dying to our greed and ego.
All of which we eat and drink, and celebrate each and every Eucharist.
This mass, and every Mass is God’s call to us to change our lives and change our world.
This mass and every mass is the Beatitudes made real in Jesus Christ, and it is God’s great LOVE song, love poem, gift of LOVE; given to us.
It is God’s great visible sign that God is with us; and God absolutely has not desire that we suffer, but only to experience God’s great Joy.

Our suffering may be real, but it doesn’t come from God.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

19th Sunday. With just a little faith...

Image
Parents, you are amazing. Each day you wake up and walk into the chaos of life with those special little somethings. Each day you walk into life and make choices, with little preparation, with those kids that are inherently bipolar: angels in one moment, in another, even Satan would be scared of them. Again, there is little prep; there is no easy app for parenting. I will repeat again, I do not mind noisy kids in mass; noisy adults I do, you all know better, but kids…please bring them and have them here. Parents thank you for bringing them and for having the courage and faith to be parents. Recently a friend asked me about depression. He asked me to describe what it is like. I could only give my experience: it is like a fog. It is being so overwhelmed by everything and feeling everything, and lacking the ability to take a step forward, to make a choice. There is no movement, only stagnation. It takes a lot of energy to be able to make a choice, to take a step. Earlier this week I w
Read more

22nd Sunday Following the Messiah

Image
My first car was a 1977 chevy nova, v-6, two doors; under the hood there was so much space. I got it the summer before my sophomore year in college, so I was 18-19. I wanted to change the oil so my dad told me how to do it. He said when I change the filter, hand tighten first, then give a small turn with the wrench, do not overtighten it. Me, being a college man, and knowing everything, gave it a good strong turn and thought well done. Several months later, it was time to change the filter again. I could not get it off. I tried and tried. My dad noticed and came to help. He told me that I had cranked it hard the last time didn’t I. Yup, with a degree of shame. He worked to get that thing off. My Uncle who lived nearby saw the commotion, He came and helped. It took them a long time, and what they did was eventually pound through the tire jack, and twisted it off that way. I learned my lesson; I felt a lot of shame on that one. Being able to hold in tension or conflicting ideals signifie
Read more

2nd Advent - Finding our way in God's Love

Image
Many years ago a friend living in Texas came up to visit me in Fernley. This friend had been born and raised in the city. Anyway, I had asked him what he would like to do and he wanted to go geocaching. Okay, I thought it is March in Northern Nevada, fun! But we went, found a cache located near Lahontan Reservoir, and so we drove out there. I parked the car near the cache and the gps device told us the cache was about 500 feet away. I looked around and had a sense of where it would be, on this hillside. My friend became worried: worried that we would get lost. I said not a problem. What if we lose sight of the car? I looked around, it was Nevada sage, no tree for miles; and again we were only going 500 feet up a hill. I said we will be fine, we will never lose sight of the car and we won’t get lost. We didn’t. I have been lost in the wilderness once. It was scary. I was in Northern New Mexico, in a thick forest and it was an overcast day. I was by myself, and nobody knew where I was, a
Read more