9th Sunday after Pentecost 7 August 2022 Punishment
Does God punish? Not as in ‘taking revenge’. He does not want us to suffer hurt but He will allow suffering if it is needed to advance the cause of our salvation. Sometimes harsh measures are required to reach the ultimately soft conclusion.
He is warning us so that we ourselves will make any necessary changes. In that event there would be no need for punishment because the point is already taken.
The same can be said for all prophecies, and messages from Heaven. They are sometimes severe in their tone, but it is all for a reason - to move us to repentance and conversion first, and thus not needing correction or punishment.
We can come to love God for His goodness, and not out of fear.
God wants us to have an attitude of reverence towards Him, of belief in His love and good intentions towards us; of gratitude, humility and loyalty to Him. He has been so good that all these attitudes become our normal way of interacting with Him.
He wants us to have real unity with Him, actually being good, not because we fear punishment, but because we love God, and with that, all that is right and good.
Fear of the Lord, one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, does not mean we are quivering nervously, but that we take God seriously, with all the reverence and attention that is required.
We think now, and act upon it, making and keeping good resolutions; and if those resolutions collapse we make new ones, and eventually one of them will hold up.
We see God's attitude to punishment when He laments the fate of Jerusalem (Lk 19,41-47). He weeps because they have missed so many chances to be saved.
He wanted instead that sinners would come to Him and be forgiven.
This has never yet happened on the scale that Our Lord wants, so we see the plagues and disorders continue; along with the crumbling of established order as people become more rebellious.
The remedy for all of it is very simple: Repent! That is everything in one word.
There will be other things that are needed but there has to be a clear repentance from the human race.
We repent for one’s own sins, and as far as we can for the sins of all mankind.
We are prepared to do more for that result. If we are close to Our Lord we will share in His desire to save sinners.
Meanwhile, for as long as we live and the world lasts, we maintain a state of humility and reverence towards God, always seeking to improve on wherever we are, never presuming that we have done enough, or that we are good enough as we are.
In this state we will be pursuing all the benefits of salvation as we grasp that more is available to us, if only we seek it.
If the word ‘punishment’ seems too strong or too harsh, then we can say ‘purification’ – things that go wrong can purify us of false or disordered attachments.
Or ‘purgation’, another word with a similar thrust. In Purgatory the souls are ‘purged’ or purified from sinful attachments.
It is painful but also sweet, as we discover the goodness of God and wonder why we did not do that sooner.
Why wait till we die to find that out? We can do it now as we ask the Lord to hold back His punishments, and give us instead the grace to do His will.
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