Who’s In Charge Around Here?
July 26, 2023
Father John Riccardo
“Brothers and sisters, we know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose. For those He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those He predestined He also called; and those He called He also justified; and those he justified He also glorified”
Romans 8:28-30
My mom lived in off-the-chart pain for much of my life, and especially for the final twenty years before she was called home. In what I can only describe as a miracle straight out of the New Testament, she had been miraculously healed from a similar pain when I was a boy. One day my mom wasn’t able to function without debilitating pain – a pain that had crippled her for years – and the next day my mom was playing tennis and becoming the club champ. It was extraordinary! It’s nearly impossible to put into words the impact this miracle had on her, our family, our parish, and on everyone who knew us.
Some years later, though, all the pain came back. With a vengeance. My mom knew God could heal her; He had once before, after all. She came to trust that the One who had healed her was asking her to unite this pain to His cross for others. Unromantic and unwanted as it was, she knew the pain wasn’t in vain. And so she started to ask for intentions to pray for, something to do with her suffering. Over the years, those intentions became so numerous that she started to write them down on legal pads so as not to forget any of them. Gradually, she filled up dozens of legal pads. Marriages in trouble. Women considering aborting an unwanted pregnancy. Teens struggling with suicidal thoughts. Men fighting addictions. And more.
I’m not sure about you, but there’s a part of me that’s ready to be done with St. Paul and his 8th chapter in his Letter to the Romans. It’s as if the Church is deliberately giving us small, bite-size portions of this chapter, much of it dealing with suffering. Why? Because suffering is as problematic as it is for humanity, and perhaps even more so for those of us who have faith. For those without faith, what reasons could they possibly have to protest against pain, suffering and injustice. If the world is just “thrown into existence,” if there’s no purpose to anything, no ultimate reason for anything, if we just emerged from the slime and are heading nowhere, then why not suffering, pain and the rest of it. For those who believe in God, however, and not just a god, but the God who has revealed Himself to be Love, then suffering, pain, injustice and the rest can become very problematic indeed. Nobody asks more questions of God about suffering than Scripture. Precisely because the Jewish and Christian people believe in a God who is good, kind, merciful, just, compassionate and love, we often come across various people pounding their fists, so to speak, on God’s chest, bewildered by what’s going on – in the world, their country, their family, or their own hearts.
My mom was one of those people. She pounded profusely. But over time, she was able to say – and witness to those of us who knew her – exactly what Paul is telling us: “We know all things work for good,” even if those things aren’t themselves good.
We need to tread very carefully here. When pain and suffering happen to us, the last thing most of us want are pious platitudes or simplistic solutions. “Everything happens for a reason” is not comforting to someone in the throes of terrible pain. Sometimes the “reason” something happened is because someone horribly abused their freedom and inflicted terrible pain on another.
Paul is not telling us in this passage that God wants everything to happen to us that happens to us. Nor is Paul telling us that God lets it all happen to us so that we can learn an important lesson. What he is telling us is that God is so mighty, so gracious, so merciful, so loving, that He can bring good even out of horrible things. The worst thing that was ever done, the greatest evil ever enacted by the human race, happened on that Friday we call “Good.” And look what He did with it. He defeated the powers of Sin, Death and hell by it. If we had been there that day, we would surely have thought it was senseless violence, a total disaster, a horrible end to an otherwise promising life. And we would have been wrong.
Shortly after my mom died, I had an unforgettable experience. I “saw” her, standing wondrously upright, radiant with joy. Jesus was walking with her, and showing her various people still on this earth. I was captivated by what I “saw.” “Do you see that couple?” Jesus asked her as He pointed to a husband and wife standing in their kitchen. “You united your suffering to My cross for their marriage…and they’re still together.” They walked on further. “Do you see that young girl there?” He asked, pointing to a bouncing teenager on the basketball court. “She was on the verge of taking her life, and you united your pain to Mine and look at her!” On and on they walked, with Jesus showing her person after person, and situation after situation for which she had offered up her pain.
When this ended – whatever it was – I asked my mother, “Mom, what’s it like to not be in pain anymore?” In prayer, I “saw” my mom. She looked up as if she was thinking, and then, with a somewhat puzzled look on her face said to me, “‘Pain.’ I remember that word. But I don’t remember pain.”
Was all that just my fanciful imagination? It might have been. But it’s so very consistent with all that Paul, no, God, is revealing to us through Paul this coming Sunday. All things work for good for those who love God. All things.
Let us ask Paul to intercede for us this week that we too might come to know this, and that we might grow in trust that God knows what He is doing, even when we don’t .
