Many bad things happen in our world and in our own lives. We see major world events that cause suffering and loss of life. We experience suffering and sorrow in our own lives. Many different things are bad or even evil. We see the physical suffering and death of those around us and those whom we love. We also see the bad actions of others that hurt people, wound the person doing those actions, and offend God.
As Catholics who know our God to be all good and all loving, we might often wonder how bad things can happen. This is an age-old problem of understanding how evil exists if God is all good. These bad things are all, in one way or another, the absence of the goodness of God. An analogy that can help to understand this is the example of the sun. The sun produces light and heat. But darkness and cold still exist. The sun does not produce this darkness and cold. It only produces light and heat. Cold and darkness happen when something gets in the way of the light and heat of the sun.
With evil, we know that the good God does not make evil but rather, the reality of evil is the absence of His goodness. When we experience evil, something has gotten in the way of God’s goodness.
When we see natural evils such as sickness, suffering, and death, this is the result of the sin of our first parents Adam and Eve. God in His goodness gave us free will. This free will is meant for man to freely love and serve God with our whole lives. But Adam and Eve, and all of mankind, misused this gift of free will and turned from God’s grace and goodness. This turning from God is the origin of man’s first evil called Original Sin. Because our first parents turned from God’s grace by sinning, now the whole human race experiences sickness, suffering, and death.
We also know the presence of evil in people’s actions. These actions that inhibit or turn away from God’s goodness are sins. When we misuse our free will to do the opposite thing of what God wants, we turn from His goodness, this is the origin of moral evil.
Unfortunately, evil is a reality in one shape or form in all of our lives. Our Faith helps us with this reality of evil. The Catechism says, “In time we can discover that God in his almighty providence can bring a good from the consequence of an evil, even a moral evil, caused by His creatures.” (CCC. 312) If you think about history and the many evils, moral or natural, that have occurred, you may or may not be able to see that God has brought good out of it. Often the way God works is a mystery and we may never know all of the good things that God is working out. However, if you look at the greatest evil that man has committed you can begin to see how God works. God gave us His only Son in the Person of Jesus Christ and we, by our sins, put Him to Death. God, through this evil, brought about the greatest good of all time, the salvation of the whole human race.
Fr. Jacquemin
