Thursday 10 July 2014

4th Sunday after Pentecost 6 Jul 2014 Sermon

4th Sunday after Pentecost 6.7.14 The problem of suffering

St Paul in today’s epistle speaks of creation groaning in anticipation of events yet to happen, namely the full transformation of the world in the light of Christ’s resurrection, ascension, and return in glory.

Christ has risen. He has overcome sin and death. Yet the world is still full of misery! How can this be? In brief it is because too much of the human race is still disobeying the will of God. And this disobedience (= sin) results in a large amount of disorder in the world.

If we stopped sinning the world would be a very pleasant place to live.

Many people tackle this from the wrong end. They say, Why is there so much wrong in the world? It must mean there is no God? Or that He has abandoned us…. etc.

Do we interpret God in terms of the suffering or the suffering in terms of God? This is the choice we have.

As Catholics we think of God first and then look at the suffering. The reason there is suffering is that people do not obey God.

Sin causes suffering. If there were no sin ever committed there would have been no suffering either.

We usually cannot attribute particular outcomes to particular sins but we do know that every sin makes matters worse; and conversely that every good action will make things better.

There are forces for good and forces for evil. Which one is going to come out stronger? That is up to us.

The people say: If God fixes the problems then I will believe in Him. God says: if the people will believe in Me, then I will fix the problems. Who is going to give way first?

If we all behaved, and prayed, we would have a much better society than we have now - much less crime, and even less accidents, less ‘natural’ disasters.

It begins with you and me. We may or may not live to see a better world but we will at least have peace of mind ourselves. We will have to take some of the fallout resulting from the disorder of the world, but in the midst of that we can still have interior peace.

In any case we must not be too pessimistic about the future of the world. We cannot rule out the power of grace, the power of God to act on large numbers of people at the same time, as He did at Fatima, for example. We can be sure that God desires a major transformation of the human race and we can hope that He will accelerate this outcome.

We must do our bit, meanwhile, and regardless of any other circumstance.

And we offer the same solution to anyone we contact.

If it seems improbable that things improve we have today’s Gospel, where the apostles are told to put out their nets, even though it is not the best time of day. Worldly logic would say it is unlikely they will catch anything. And it is probably how we feel as to our prospects of converting sinners.

But if we obey as the apostles did we will be providing the fuel for the fire, the channel needed for the grace of God to advance.

Who knows what size catch we can make? Or how much influence on the surrounding society? Hard hearts can melt. The way people treat each other can change. Swords will be turned into ploughshares (Is 2,4).

We are talking here of more than just goodwill. Only by grace can we change things, and still maintain hope through all the disorders around us (thus today’s epistle: we groan but we also hope).

So far we (the human race) have reaped what we have sown. If we give humble obedience to the will of God we will see a different harvest!

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