Well, good evening.

This is a School of Faith four week class on suffering called

"Why me? Why, God?" The instructor is Dr. Troy Hinkel, one of the instructors
with the School of Faith. What I'd like to do is begin with prayer and then we'll get
started with our discussion.

OPENING PRAYER

Let's place ourselves in the presence of Almighty God, in whom we live and move
and have our being. We call upon him in the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit.

Heavenly Father, while we were still sinners, you sent to us your only Son, our
Lord, and our Savior, Jesus Christ, not to condemn us, which is what we truly
deserve, but rather to save us and to reveal your merciful love to us in the most
radical way - by his own passion, suffering, death and resurrection. Lord Jesus,
You teach us that you come to give us life and give it to the full! May we respond
with open and ready hearts to the graces that you wish to pour down upon us, so
that we too wan pick up our crosses daily and follow you with a smile on our lips
and a light in our hearts. We ask this through Christ, our Lord, Amen. In the
father, son, and the Holy spirit. Amen.

WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION OF COURSE

Well, thank you all for being here. So, we're going to be talking about suffering.

This idea came to me because it seemed like everywhere I turned, I was running
into people who were suffering and struggling, especially within my own School of
Faith family.

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Let's start off by saying that suffering is something that is inescapable. No matter
how comfortable we try to make our lives, no matter how hard we try to avoid it,
it seems to find us, doesn't it? And when it does, I'm going to take a guess, I'm
going to say that we don't like it!

We don't like it when it does, but I want to say something right off the bat about
suffering. Suffering is actually good. It's actually good because suffering is a
proper response on our behalf to the presence of evil. If we didn't suffer or
experience pain when evil was present, then something would be wrong. So,
what we're going to do today is to look at what has been called "The Problem of
Evil" and how we can believe in an all-good and all-loving God while evil exists?
Did he cause it? Does he will it? Does he want us to suffer? If it's supposedly good,
how do we understand that? We're going to talk about that today.

Then next week, we're going to talk about his only begotten Son, especially the
passion of our Lord, his suffering. Why did he suffer? What does it mean? What
lessons do we draw from that? So, it's going to be kind of a meditation on the
suffering of Christ.

Then, the 3rd week, we're going to look at the lives of the saints. What do they
teach us about suffering? One of the things we can say right off the bat is that
they were joyful and peaceful in the face of it. How? Well, when you attend that
session, you'll find out.

Then the last night, we'll look at, with all that has been said, okay, now what does
that mean for me? How do I understand my own suffering, how is it redemptive
and how do I do so joyfully? How do I approach the anxieties and worries of my
life in a way that is going to be productive for me spiritually? So that'll be our last
talk.

TOPIC FOR THIS SESSION

So, how can an all-good, all-loving God, Who's all powerful cause suffering?
Because God is the cause of all that is, right? There is nothing that is that he did
not cause. That's what it means to be God, the creator, he creates everything. All
things are created through him. But this poses a problem, "The problem of Evil."
Why did he create it? Or did he? Why is it here? Is it some cosmic accident?

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If he's totally good, how is this compatible with his own nature? If it's
incompatible with his nature, we're going to have struggles believing in him,
aren't we? In fact, this is one of the arguments posed by many against the
existence of God. The mere fact that evil is here means there cannot be an all-
good and all-loving God. Maybe there is a God, but he's not the God of
Christianity, Judeo-Christianity; he's maybe some evil genius or something that
likes to toy with us, but not a good God.

So, either a good God exists and evil doesn't or evil exists and a good God doesn't,
the conclusion is obvious. And so, someone who argues against the existence of
God might say something like this:

"What do we say of the child who is dying of cancer? If this is done for a purpose,
planned through all eternity by God, then this is the deepest evil. If God is this
kind of an actor upon his creation, then he cannot justify his actions, and in this,
his evil is revealed.”

Well, that is a very powerful problem for us. And maybe, in our own lives, we've
wondered similarly, if we've had similar struggles, which is why we named this
class: "Why Me? Why, God?

Well, I'm going to spend the rest of time answering that because that's a worthy
question, a worthy problem. I think the first thing we need to do though, is define
our terms:

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EVIL

What is "evil"? What is it? Is it a thing? Does it have substance? What is it?

Well, I've got news, good news. Evil Is the absence of a good. It's the lacking of a
good; a privation. It is no thing. It is nothing but a lack.

So already we're seeing an answer come together with regard to God. Evil does
not exist substantially in the way that we think of things. Rather, it is a lacking of
something.

If I were to draw a picture of a person

and left one of the eyes off and put a
nose, mouth and one eye, we would
say, "okay, there's something
missing” in the order of the picture. If
we ordered a bunch of pizzas tonight
and we opened them up and there
were supposed to be eight slices and
there are only six, two are missing.
There's a lack.

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Death is the lack, the privation of life. Physicists tell us that darkness is the
privation of light; the absence of light. Cold, the absence of heat. Somehow in the
natural order of things, there may be something missing that we know ought to
be there and we experience suffering (or discomfort) because of this. If it were
otherwise, we would not suffer.

We know by experience that something is missing; something that should be

there that isn't.
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Buddha, the founder of the philosophy (or religion as it is sometimes designated)
called Buddhism, grew up in a palace in India. His father wanted him to be
sheltered from all suffering. He didn't want him experiencing any of it. The story
goes, that Buddha escaped up and over the wall and out through the garden and
went into the city and there found all kinds of suffering - poverty, dying, leprosy,
disease, horrific things. And, of course, this bothered him. He'd never experienced
anything like this ever. He'd been sheltered from it.

Well, to him, that was a puzzle, a puzzle that he wanted to solve. So he parked
himself under a tree, as the story goes, up by the Hill and he stayed there until he
figured it out. Why is there suffering in the world? Why did I experience that
there in the city? And he understood why his father wanted to keep him from it -
because it was horrible!

And he realized suffering is caused by a disparity, a disparity that exists between

what I have and what I want. I want this and I don't have it. I want food, I don't
have it, I suffer. I want water, I don't have it. I want good medical care, I don't
have it, I suffer. I want a good night's sleep, I don't have it, I suffer, etc. I want life,
it's dwindling out of me, I'm dying, I suffer. You see?

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So, he recognized that there is a void out there that should be filled. He saw that
evil is a privation and suffering is a response to it. But his solution was a little odd
in my opinion, because even though he did realize rightfully that, we can't control
the world - It is what it is - If I have this and don't have that and the world isn't
providing it for me; and there's no way I can make the world give it to me, then
what do I do? I suffer.

But, this is where it gets odd, in my opinion, he said the option to avoid suffering
is to simply quit desiring it.

This is called in Buddhism

as “The Noble Eight-fold
Path to Enlightenment.”
Kill off your desire then you
don't suffer because then
you do not experience the
disparity between what you
have and what you want.
As one of my professors
put it, it's a bit like killing
the patient to cure the disease. The disease is cured, the patient is dead. Because,
how do you not desire? You would have to kill off your personality. That's how.
But he was right in recognizing this privation. He understood at least what evil
was and that it produced suffering when it was present; that it was a lack of
something that was not there that should be there.

So, evil then is not a thing, not a

positive. It is a negative. There's
supposed to be something there
that is not. Suffering and pain
are our response and reaction to
that reality, no matter what the
suffering and pain is. And we
need to respond that way
because if we didn't there would
be a problem.

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And so, what we believe is different than the idea of killing off the personality.

We look at suffering
differently. It's not something
to be escaped. Jesus says,
"Take up your cross daily and
follow me" (Luke 9:23). He
never promised us a rose
garden (Hey, someone should
write that down. It'd be a
good lyric for a song, I beg
your pardon...lol). He never
promised it to us. Instead, He
promised us it would be
difficult.

So evil, then, somehow got into the system, didn't it? And, when it's there, we
want an explanation, don't we? Why?

There've been some answers to that "why?" that we need to point out, one in
particular? Because it's been very popular in recent years - in fact, for the last
probably 25 years. For example, in those Star Wars movies.

DUALISM - GOOD VS. EVIL

The Force - divided equally between the dark side and

the light side or the good side. Two equal forces
fighting against each other with equal strength.
That's called dualism and that is not what we believe.
Evil is not an equal strength to good. So, that's some
good news. It's not an equal strength. The force of
good and the force of evil is more like fire and water.
Well, some say it's like fire and water, but it's actually
more like water and not water or a fire or not fire. It's
the absence of something that ought to be there. It's
not an equal force.

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So, what we're talking about then, when
we're talking about things that actually exist,
we're talking about the things that are good
in and of themselves. If it exists and has
actual being, it is good. That's what Genesis
tells us. God created and saw that it was
good (Genesis 1:31). Existence itself is good.
It's a good thing. We want to have that
existence.

But it still begs this question and brings this

puzzle - How then does evil come about?

This leads to the questions, what is sin, and why do we do it?

We never sin or commit an evil because it is evil. We do it under the pretext of

some good. If I steal somebody's purse, it's for the good of the money that I can
use to buy things, maybe that I need.

If I lie, there's some good I'm after, maybe to protect myself from being harmed.

You see, there's some good that I'm after, but what causes the evil, is that I am
destroying or harming some other good that ought to be there. But I never sin, I
never choose evil because it is evil. The most evil people we can think of in the
world, - and usually Hitler or Stalin or people like that come up - they were
successful to a point because they were promising good things: "I am going to
make Germany stronger. We're going to give you jobs. We're going to have a
powerful military. We're going to make restitution to those European powers who
forced us to pay for WWI when it wasn't our fault" according to him.
But those are good things. If you're in that nation, you want a strong nation. You
want jobs, you want security, but the price is that we are going to take lives from
those people over there because they're Jewish, or because they're Polish, or
because they're Russians or because they're fighting us. So we're going to take
them out and then we'll take what they have and we'll be even better. But you
see his goal of making a strong nation is a good goal. That's what he convinced
people of. That's why they stood behind him until they realized what he was
really up to.

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We never choose sin or evil under the pretext that "Yeah, this is bad and if I do
this, it is going to ruin my life forever. That's why I'm doing this." No, it is because
we think there's some good there. So that shows us that God is still at work in us
when we're choosing to sin. And so there is no force really that can match God.

There is no force that can match His goodness. And if I'm going to get to heaven,
that means that I'm going to share in His goodness; that means I'm going to share
in His Being. And that is what He is inviting me to. He is saying, "Hey, all the good
things you have, I'm going to give you more of, if you let me. How does more Joy
sound to you? Sound pretty good? How about more peace, more life, more
health, more friends, more fun, more love? How does that sound?"

Sounds pretty good. And that is what we get - more. He's offering the good that
He has. And if we're going to enter heaven, we're going to receive it.

But, unfortunately, there is this mystery - this “mystery of iniquity.” It's called this
mysterious "attraction to evil.” So, I want to talk about that for a second so we
can understand where it comes from and why it's here.

Let's back all the way up to before

the creation of humans and look at
the creation of angels. We're told
in the scriptures (Jewish tradition
teaches) that there was an angel
named Lucifer who was the most
glorious creature that God had
created, up to that point.

And he was created good along with all the other angels. But, at the moment of
his creation, we're told that he said, "I will not serve you, God, or your plan." This
is supposedly as God was revealing to him and the other angels that he was
creating a whole world and telling them, "Here's your mission angels. I'm going to
create these creatures down there called humans. And there will also be animals
and plants and other things and solar systems and your mission is to serve them,
and in this way, you will be serving me." Lucifer basically responds, "Not me. No,
thanks."

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Somehow in our freedom, and in his freedom, there is an awfully intoxicating or
tempting power there. It seems as though he (or we) can look at God and say,
"Okay, you might've created me. And I may not be able to change that. But, I can
foil your plan and I can create my own thing - no thing. That's what I can do. I can
say no."

So that somehow it seems, in the mystery of our freedom and that temptation of
power, that when we tell God, "no," we're on par with him, we can create our
own thing. Even if it is nothing (no thing); even if it's sin and evil and can destroy
what He has created. "Look at that, I am His equal because I overcome him."

What is the temptation, then,

that the serpent, Satan offers
Adam and Eve in the garden? It is
knowledge of good and evil that
they are forbidden to know; and
what is it that gets them to bite -
literally and figuratively? It is
when Satan tells them that "You
will be like, God." Basically, "you're going to discover the full power of your
freedom. You can become like Him on your own. You don't need him. That's what
he's afraid of. He's afraid you're going to discover this power of your own and
you're going to be out from underneath him. Then you're really going to be free.
And then what's He going to do? He's going to lose out on you if He created you
too strong. And he knows it. And so he's trying to hide that fact from you. Don't
let him do it. He tried that on me. Look at me. You take a bite of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil and you will be like God; you will be able to replace
him and define for yourselves, good and evil."
Is that possible? Is it possible for us to define for ourselves what is good and what
is evil? Can we do that? What do you think? Yes? No? Can we do that?

You may have to think about this carefully because we live in a culture that says,
yes, define your own life, make your own mark, determine your own destiny,
decide for yourself, be yourself, express yourself and don't let anyone else tell you
what that means, define it for yourself. You pick your truth, let them pick their
truth and just tolerate each other. That is called “Moral Relativism.”

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Satan was the first relativist. So, I ask you that again, can we define for ourselves
what is good and what is evil?

This is part of the American dream,

defining our own destiny, deciding for
ourselves, the course that we ourselves
are going to chart and whether or not we
are going to buck the system.

And so, there's this antithesis at work in us

now where we think we’ve got freedom on
one side, and law on the other, and that
law might be necessary, but it's a
necessary evil. And it's evil because it
curtails my freedom and I'm going to cling to my freedom and I am going to resist
every chance I get.

And the only way I can believe that's true is if I believe the lie of Satan, that God is
a tyrant and not a father; that he's trying to keep me from something; that he's
afraid of the power he gave me in my own freedom. If a supreme being like Satan
could get tripped up with this pride; with this imaginary view: "I can create my
own "nothing", my own sin and foil his plan; and I'm his equal and I can do it

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myself." Then that's the very temptation he offers Adam and Eve and us every
time we sin; that's what's present. We're saying something like this, "Ordinarily,
God, you're right, on most occasions, but on this occasion, you are wrong because
this _____ looks good to me. And you said it isn't good so who am I going to trust?
It looks good to me. I've been told it's a sin. Put those two on a scale. Who am I
going to trust?"

When we sin, we trust me, myself. We almost subconsciously say: "You're wrong,
I am right. This looks good. I must be better than you. I must be able to replace
you. I must be able to overcome you." And that's the attraction for us. That is the
way that we can be tempted. Somehow this "mysterious attraction of iniquity"
goads us into following ourselves to the destruction of some good. And we think
that that's good because we did it ourselves like a child who knows you're not
looking and writes on the wall and destroys the paint job or breaks your couch
because they sense that in breaking or destroying something, they're exerting
their will. You can see it from a young age. We call it the terrible twos. And it's
this expression of the power of the will that "Hey, if mom and dad are giving me
rules, they're just to take away my freedom, and when they are not looking, I'm
going to do something I am not supposed to, I am going to run across the street
because I know I'm not supposed to; I am going to eat that piece of candy that I
know I'm not supposed to; I'm going to go tattletale because I know I'm not
supposed to."

It's present in us right from the beginning. Well, if evil, then, is a privation of a
good - and we see how it tripped up Satan and it's tripping us up - and it's not an
existent thing of itself - then it couldn't have been caused by God. It's the only
thing really we can claim.

There was a famous Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain, who was quoting the
passage of Jesus where he tells his apostles, "Apart from me, you can do nothing."

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And he says, "Yes, this means that
we cannot do anything apart from
Christ. Yes. But it also means that
apart from him, we can do "no
thing", we can sin. Because that's
what sin is. We can do that apart
from him. And so it seems like
we're doing something legitimate
here, but when we do, we're
destroying some good. And then that is going to have repercussions on
everybody.

Now I want to be careful.

The story of Job, the

beautiful story of suffering in
the old Testament. And once
he started suffering at
Satan's behest, his friends
come up to him and say
"Aww, look at all that
suffering, it must have been
something you did."

And that was a mistaken notion even in Jesus's day. For example, when he's
talking about the Tower of Siloam that fell on people and the apostles were
saying, "Well, whose sin caused that, theirs or their fathers?" And he says, "Hey,
it's going to be worse. It wasn't caused by their specific sin, but it's sin in general."

Think of like little bubbles in a beer, that as they rise to the top creating all that
foam; all of our sins together, create this mess; this chaos that exists in our world,
and God did not cause it, we did. And the wages of that sin is death and suffering.
Adam and Eve brought it in originally and we bring in any each and every time we
sin, even if we think it's by ourselves in the closet, in the dark, and no one knows.

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That sin affects us. So
this whole idea of what
two consenting adults
do between themselves
is no one's business -
It's not true. It's all of
our business because it
creates problems. It's a
cosmic effect. When
Adam and Eve fell and
were kicked out of
paradise, evil, their evil,
affected everything. So that the lion now is eating the little zebras; and the
mosquitoes come in and bite us in the snakes and headaches and backaches and
everything. That's all from sin. It affected everything.

So, it's not created by God, it doesn't have a positive existence in and of itself.
Why then, the final question, does He allow it to remain? He didn't cause it, we
do. It destroys. We see why we're drawn to it. And it's a mysterious attraction.
Why does it remain? Why does he allow it? What is the greatest tragedy that we
can possibly think of, the greatest possible tragedy? What do you think it is?

Possible answers:
• Death of a child?

Well, I can think of greater ones. What about the death of millions of children
although that one would be terrible!

What's the greatest possible tragedy?

• Losing the soul to hell?

That's pretty tragic. So what about everybody losing their soul? That's even more
tragic.

But, there's a greater tragedy yet. What could possibly be worse than every single
human person going to hell forever?

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 • God not coming?

Or God being destroyed. The greatest tragedy we can think of is God being
destroyed; God being killed. Some would say that It's impossible, He is God and
God can't be killed. And it's true in that sense. God always exists. He can't be
utterly destroyed, but his death on the cross is worse than even the tragedy of
everybody going to hell because he's God, He's infinite. You can't compare large
numbers of finite people to someone or something that is infinite! The greatest
tragedy is God dying on the cross. And, yet, what do we have hanging on all of our
walls at home and in churches and on our necklaces. And whenever we begin to
pray, what do we have? What is that?

We have crosses, crucifixes.

Why, why do we have that

hanging there?

Answer: Because He died for

our sins. we are the reason he's
up there.

We are the reason he is up

there and he is saving us from hell which is what we deserve.

This is what we are going to look more into next week. This is why we can say this
suffering is not evil. It's a response to evil. And it's a good response because we
should suffer when evil is present. But now it also brings about something even
better - redemption. The greatest tragedy in the world is the greatest thing that
has ever happened and there will never be one greater than that.

And that's why Saint Paul says "I preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the
Jews, folly to the Gentiles." Because that's just mere folly. He proclaims it. When
he gets to Athens, he's trying to talk to them about Jesus and at first they're
interested. But then he realizes that they just found his teaching novel: "Oh here
is a new philosophy we have mulled about before." So they mulled about it and
then they decided, "Aww that's old now" and they moved on and they're no

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longer interested in hearing about
the gospel. So he says, "so I
preached to them Christ crucified"
(is what he tells the Corinthians).
I'm not going to be eloquent in
speech. I'm not going to try to come
up with some masterful argument.
That's it!

"The greatest tragedy is the greatest success for us. And now, every tragedy
subsequent to this one, can take on the same magnitude. It can become the
greatest thing for us!"

Jumping ahead a little bit to next week but this answers our question, "Why does
God allow evil?" Because he can bring a greater good from it!

He took the greatest evil of all and

brought the greatest good out of it
- Jesus dying for our sins on the
cross so that now we too may be
raised to new life. So physical
death is not the greatest evil.
Physical suffering is not the
greatest evil. Eternal spiritual
suffering and death is the greatest
evil but we don't have to go there if we don't want to, we now can eternally live
because of him.

And so, you hear this phrase, this Catholic phrase, "Offer it up!" My parents loved
telling that one to me. for example:

Me: "I don't feel like going to Mass."

Parents: "Offer it Up!"
Me: Got a toothache."
Parents: "Offer it up!"
Me: "Got a headache."
Parents: "Offer it Up!"

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Me: "Oh, he's bothering me" or "Someone stinks.”
Parents: "Offer it up"

That's the answer. Why do we say that? What does that mean to say "Offer it
up"?

It's an invitation: "Pick it up

your cross daily and follow
me if you would have
eternal life. It is up to you. I
won't force it on you.

But if you say yes, now, by

a mere act of your will, it is
being transformed by my
grace, you can look at all
the problems in your life,
no matter how small, no
matter how big, and you
can unite them with me.

And not only will that bring you a deep peace, in ways that the world cannot
understand, but you also will be able to bring about great goods that you won't
even know about until heaven. You'll find out that when you offered up that
toothache, when you offered up that bothersome brother, maybe some soul was
saved because God used that!"

There's a fantastic phrase in

Colossians 1:24, where St. Paul says:
"I make up what is lacking in the
sufferings of Christ." What could it
possibly be lacking? What could
possibly be lacking in God's offering?
How could he say that? What does he
mean? What is lacking?

Individual remorse?

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Yeah, individual remorse and individual union with the cross. And so when he
offers up his sufferings for the Colossians, he's saying, "This is for your own good,
you're receiving grace from my sufferings that I'm offering up in the lacking of
Christ?" Because what's lacking? Our wills - individually. This could be the only
reason for the existence of evil and this is the only answer. Folly, a stumbling
block to those hard of heart!

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But...God can bring a greater good and does so and when he brings that greater
good, it expands His life in us, we're going to see next week when he enters into
the sin of humanity, he is transforming it once and for all, for all of us. So that,
now, when we sin, and we never want to, but, it becomes just one more log to
throw in the fire to help our furnace of love to burn even hotter and draws us into
him all the more, if we let it; if we want it.

So how can a good, all-loving? God, Who's all powerful, cause evil? He doesn't;
but He gives us freedom; and in so doing, we can free freely choose Him and the
good things that he wants to cause through us, or not him, NO THING, nothing,
the sin, the privation. And when we do it has an effect on everybody else and He
allows it because he can bring a greater good out of it. Now, that's good news!

So next week we're going to pick up with this theme of the Redemption of the
Cross so that we may understand our spiritual journey through the eyes of Christ.

So, questions, Comments?

Yes, Brian?

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Brian: So, you say that because of sin, evil entered the world and that created
mosquitoes and hunger and death and suffering?

Troy: Because of the abuse of freedom, sin and evil entered the world, Yes.
Brian: And earthquakes too. I can tell you that there are members of my family
that would be very skeptical that our sin could somehow spiritually or
metaphysically create tornadoes. How do I help them to understand that
connection?

Alright. So Brian's question is how can I explain to someone who doesn't believe
that my sin is connected to all the tragedies, how do I know? Well, we have to be
told this by Christ for one thing, like the example I gave of the Tower of Siloam,
that is in Luke's Gospel (I can get the exact verse if you wish), He's the one that
tells us it's not their specific sins that caused the tower to fall on them, but the
"sin of the world" is at work in causing this destruction and causing these
problems.

If God invites us to participate in him and through that participation, then, he will
shine a radiating grace through us to reach someone else. I mean, isn't that what
is hopefully happening here tonight? And then you all are hoping to take this to
someone you know and love and do the same - so we pass on God's grace
through one another... Then, just reverse that. If we say no to God and the grace
that he wants to give through me, doesn't come through, then that person over
there that he wished me to give it to, never gets it. And then they are going to
perish without getting it some other way.

In terms of all the tornadoes and everything, it's the same thing. When we
experience these natural disasters, there's a sense that we know that there's
something wrong; that that's not right. We sense that this isn't the way it's
supposed to be because of the effects, - death, destruction, disease. We know
that those things are privations. And so, if those privations exist then, they must
have a source - evil. And once you know that evil is the source, then, you know
Adam and Eve brought it into the world (Romans 5). And if they brought it into
the world, there's your answer. We can see these things and determine from
them that "Yeah, there's something wrong there. There's a privation. For
example, that farm is supposed to be standing with that farmer and his wife, he
built with his own two hands and now they're all gone. There's something wrong

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with that from when that tornado came through." Well, the only origin of any
privation is itself evil. That's what it is. And we know that it came through them
and before them, it didn't exist. And I would ask the person who is skeptical
where do they think these things come from? Does God create tornadoes directly
to go destroy people? We say he doesn't; he's created conditions, but now there's
a privation that occurs in those conditions and disorder in those conditions that
causes something that shouldn't be there. He didn't do it. Does that help?

Brian: I think the answers to a lot of theological questions is that God has revealed
the truth to us and at some point, we have to humbly submit to it.

Another question: Do you think that sometimes God allows evil or bad things to
happen in order to get our attention?

Yes, don't we feel in our suffering - and this is what we're going to be talking
about the very last night - our own finitude, our own weakness, our own need for
Him? Yeah, I think that he wants to be our all in all; to be our only reserve; our
only resource. We think that that means, "Well, but I'll lose my freedom in Him."
On the contrary we gain it in Him. "The truth shall set you free." And so He allows
a lot of false, illusory reliances to fill our lives so we can feel a sense of security;
He allows that because He realizes we're weak. But when the time comes, He's
going to yank some of those or allow them to be yanked, so that we draw closer
to Him.

As we draw closer to Him, we draw closer to each other, we draw closer to the
entire Church, the Church Triumphant - those already in the Kingdom of Heaven;
the Church Suffering, those being prepared for the Kingdom of Heaven in
Purgatory; the Church Militant here on earth. We're drawn into a greater bond of
unity when we're closer to Him. And so again, that's one of the good things He
brings out of suffering and why he tolerates it.

Another Question: Then, how does it happen that some people suffer more than
others?

Well, we can't say, that as Jesus points out in Luke's Gospel, that our own sin
causes our own problems. Rather. it's like the analogy of the foam in the beer –

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it’s just one more bubble that floats to the top; and then that causes everybody's
problems.

Now, some people do suffer more, but where

suffering and sin abound, St. Paul says, grace
abounds more (Romans). We have more grace.
God's going to help us more in those situations.
And so we can't fear, spending our time in
anticipatory anxiety saying "What if...? What
if...?" We see someone over here suffering
terribly, and we think "O my, I could never handle
that!" Yea, on your own resources, you couldn't.
But if He calls you to that, when that time comes,
He'll give you the grace.

When we look at the lives of the saints, we're going to see that they endured
horrific suffering with peace and joy. How did they do that? Because He gave
them something. When people suffer more, He's there to help them. Now, they
may reject the invitation of receiving his gift and suffer even more, but that's their
choice. He gives them that choice. That's the weight of freedom. It's kind of scary.
But, if we accept him and respond to his grace, our greatest sufferings become
our greatest triumph. And so he tolerates that, because you're right, it's not
equal, some suffer more, but they're given the grace to deal with it.

He's the great

equalizer. He makes
everything equal
because he evens it out
by His assistance, His
heavenly assistance
and rewards with
eternal glory in heaven
for the patient
endurance of suffering
born through, with and
in Him in this earthly life.

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How many times do you hear, "Why do bad things happen to good people?"

Yes, we are in a vale of tears.

This is a life of toil and travail.
We don't get the life that we
want until heaven, but it has
been promised to us. I don't
want to get ahead of myself, but
there's a reason why He's
allowed these things here and
specifically how they benefit us.
We'll look at that as we go
through these next three weeks,
the specific benefits of the bad things that could happen to good people.

Okay. Last question and then we'll close with prayer.

If we take this grace and pass it on to someone else, what if they refuse to accept
it?

Our Lord tells Isaiah, "My Word will

not return to me void, but will
accomplish that for which I sent it"
(Isaiah 55:11). So, if that happens,
then we can still know that there's
some grace, somehow, that is going
to benefit somebody. We just need to
give truth a hearing; sometimes we
can be a little too faint of heart and
are too afraid.

We do need to be prudent because

we could be too strong and cause them to dig their heels in more and drive them
away more. But we've got to trust that when we feel prompted to speak and
share the truth, that even if that one, there doesn't listen, that some good is
coming of that as the Spirit is moving forward and God's Word will not return
void. That should give us encouragement, I hope, to speak the truth with love.

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Alright, why don't we close in prayer. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy
spirit, amen. All glory, be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit as it
was in the beginning is now and will be forever. Amen. In the name of the father,
son and the Holy spirit. Thank you. I'll see you next week. God bless.

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