The pertinent and unyielding question “why there is evil in our world?” still assails our hearts and minds. Our troubled existence longs for a safety heaven whereby it can find its peace. In front of the great ordeal of our times, be it terrorism, religious and racial discrimination, oppression, social injustice, wars and so forth, with the psalmist we are led to exclaim with immense sorrow: “Help, Lord; for there is no longer any that is godly; for the faithful have vanished from among the sons of men” (Ps 12,1).

Fortunately, our God takes our challenges seriously. By sending his beloved Son for us and for our salvation, God sealed forever his faithful presence with us. In Jesus Christ, God taught us the greatest lesson ever: “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Rom 5,20). Through the sacrificial act of Christ on the cross, evil has been weakened, controlled, and conquered.

In his last book Memory and Identity, which deeply tries to respond to the problems that distress our hearts, Pope John Paul II stresses that thanks to the suffering of the Crucified God, suffering has become redemptive. Thus, “it is this suffering which burns and consumes evil with the flame of love and draws forth even from sin a great flowering of good”. Therefore, the presence of evil in our world is there to “awaken our love, our self-gift in generous and disinterested service to those visited by suffering”.

Such a “hope does not disappoint us” (Rom 5,5). It lives within us to deliver us again!

Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap

San Gwann