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The Providence of God, the Question of Evil, and the Mystery of Suffering
by Carol Egan
The age-old question; the one that has the power to set hearts against the Creator, causes bewilderment, despair and sometimes, tragically, final impenitence: how can a good God allow suffering and evil? It is perhaps the most profound enigma of all time. Knowing the answer can make the difference between complete loss of faith and the decision to seize the opportunity to embrace one’s cross under the penetrating influence of divine grace.
In an earlier age, people had a more sober view of life; there seemed to be a greater understanding of the mystery of human suffering. People were able to elevate their sufferings from the material domain into the loftier spiritual realm. There was awareness that pain —while still inexplicable and mysterious—was to be endured for a greater purpose. Today, however, in the materialistic world in which we live, the only spiritualism one can find is in a pervasive obsession with psychic phenomena.
The present moment is all that counts. The modern intellect can scarcely penetrate more obvious revealed truths, much less the mystery of pain and suffering. The Catechism of the Catholic Church observes that “Even though enlightened by Him in whom it believes, faith is often lived in darkness and can be put to the test. The world in which we live seems very far from the one promised by faith. Our experiences of evil and suffering, injustice and death, seem to contradict the Gospel; they can shake our faith and become a temptation against it.”1 Just because of some trial a human soul can sever itself from the life-giving Church.
No real Christian ever requires an explanation for his pain and suffering. That is true in part because, beginning with the Age of Martyrs in the first three centuries to the present day, the Church has addressed the subject in one Council and papal document after another. One modern example is found in a major document of Vatican II, where the problem of suffering was addressed at length in relation to the modern age. The citation begins: “There is a growing body of men who are asking the most fundamental of all questions…what is man? What is the meaning of suffering, evil, death…?”2
Divine Providence: Reality and Mystery
Divine Providence is “God’s all-wise plan for the universe, the carrying out of this plan by His loving rule or governance. It is the eternal world plan and its fulfillment in time.”3 When something bad happens, what appears to be haphazard and cruel is, in truth, part of the loving plan of God. “All things work together for those who love the Lord.”4 Divine Provi dence is behind every who, every what, every which, every where and every why of our existence. God personally, directly and mysteriously intervenes into each life under the guise of ostensibly random circumstan ces. “Divine Providence is the constant, solicitous care God has in directing every moment and every detail of our lives to that final goal of union with himself in beatitude. God’s providence is universal, infallible and immutable.”5
God’s Providence is universal because all events taking place in this world—even those apparently haphazard or casual—are part of God’s eternal plan for the universe. With God there is no such thing as chance. Nothing merely “happens” as far as He is concerned. Everything is meant to serve a purpose, mysteriously foreseen and foreordained.
God’s Providence is infallible because the ultimate plans that God has for the universe cannot fail. Whatever occurs in the world takes place within the mosaic of His infinite knowledge and all embracing will. In spite of so much ostensible evidence to the contrary, what God has intended for the world will eventually come about.
His Providence is immutable because God Him self is unchangeable. His eternal plan is not make-believe, as though He adjusted things as time goes along or unexpected situations arise. The unexpected does not ever occur with God, nor can anything take place that would make Him change His mind or will about the world He brought into being.
Therefore, we creatures, as the most important par ticipators in His plan, are cared for in the minutest detail.6 The fact that some things that happen are bad or even evil should not deter us from trusting Him even at the darkest moments of our lives. Our eternal destiny depends on it.7 Men need only to submit the circumstances of their own unique lives with the wise and all-knowing plan of God, especially when some trial occurs.
The Question of Evil
Evil is the privation of a good that should be present. Both evil and good occur within the permissive providence of God. The only real evil occurs when sin is committed, thus upsetting the moral order. In sin, there is the absence of a good that should be present. As such, the only real and absolute evil is sin, which is mysteriously linked to suffering, but not necessarily as cause and effect.
Sin and suffering are linked. Pope John Paul II teaches that “man suffers on account of evil, which is a certain lack, limitation or distortion of good.”8 “It is the lack of a good that essentially belongs to a nature; the absence of a good that is natural and due to a being. Evil is therefore the absence of what ought to be there.”9 “Salvation means liberation from evil and for this reason it is closely bound up with the problem of suffering.”10 God’s providence is mysteriously, inexorably bound up with evil. Says St. Thomas Aquinas, “If evil were entirely swept away, Provi dence could not regenerate and restore the integrity of things, and this would be a greater evil than the particular evils they suffer.”11 As evil and sin are directly related to the Fall of Adam, it is in this sense that the Church speaks of the “happy fault” of Adam which occasioned the coming of the Savior; this makes God’s mercy possible only because there are sins to be forgiven.12 Holiness, which would not be possible were it not for Christ’s redemptive suffering, is derived from patient endurance of pain and suffering. Thanks to Christ’s redemptive work we are now able to imitate the suffering Christ and cooperate in our own salvation.
What is Suffering?
To suffer means to carry a cross. It is some trial or pain endured whose efficient cause is the fall of Adam. Every cross is tailor-made. Given each individual’s unique weaknesses, strengths, state in life, and complexity of circumstances, no two people experience the same trial in the same way, manifesting God’s rich involvement in our lives.
Pain and suffering are uncharted territory. Until we actually experience the trial, which is usually unexpected, we cannot know how we are going to respond, nor can we know how long the trial will endure. That is why a deep understanding of pain, suffering and the providence of God is necessary even perhaps for one’s salvation.
The pleasure principle dictates on a natural level our continuous, on-going orientation. We love leisure and gratification. We are willing, happy receivers of good from God, but when He allows evil, we too of ten become rigid and unyielding. Job, the prototypical sufferer, marked the way toward the consummate work of the sacrificial Lamb, when He said “Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” (2:10).
We live in the shadow of the cross. When Christ died on the cross, He laid the foundation for each person to imitate His cross for all time. No one can deny that every human being is visited by some form of suffering in his life. The variety of human suffering is staggering. “Suffering is something which is still wider than sickness, more complex and at the same time still more deeply rooted in humanity itself.”13 A certain idea of this problem comes to us from the distinction between physical suffering and moral suffering. “Physical suffering is present when ‘the body is hurting’ in some way, whereas moral suffering is ‘pain of the soul”.14 Physical suffering is experienced as acute or chronic physical pain from illness or injury. It can be caused by emotional dysfunction as a response to problems of modern living. It can be as severe as a mood disorder such as manic depression. Severe psychological dysfunction, such as psychosis, separates people from their grasp of reality. However, the moral pain of grave sin, to which the Holy Father refers, is perhaps the worst because of its power to separate a person from his Creator. “The opposite of salvation is…the definitive suffering: the loss of eternal life, being rejected by God, damnation.”15
Everyone suffers. The key to this great mystery is in the choice one makes to suffer willingly or unwillingly. Christ set the pattern for all time as the archetypal Sufferer; as the Model by which we should form an appropriate view of every trial. “For it was fitting that He, for whom and by whom all things exist in bringing many sons to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through suffering.”16
Fr. John Hardon insists that the words love and pain should never be separated. If Love Incarnate endured the greatest pain in human history, then these two words are inexorably and mysteriously linked as condition and consequence. Francis Fernandez links pain with joy in his exposition on human suffering which is the Church’s constant teaching since apostolic times. “Joy is inseparable from the Cross. Not only that, but we will also understand that we can never be happy if we are not united to Christ on the Cross, and that we will never know how to love if we do not at the same time love sacrifice. Those tribulations that appear to our poor human reasoning as unjust and meaningless are necessary for our personal holiness and for the salvation of many souls. Suf fering, when seen in its true light, when it serves as a means of loving more produces great peace and deep joy. That is why God often blessed us with the Cross.”17
Suffering: Entering a New Dimension
Suffering occasions inordinate self-absorption. Our preoccupation with self can misdirect our focus from emphasis on prayer and willing surrender to the will of God. The key to endurance of any trial is joining one’s pain to the Cross. Joy and deep inner peace will surely follow what seems an impossible task.
To suffer means to be patient. The Latin root for patience explains why. The word pati means to suffer. Everyone suffers in some way, but it will be either willingly or unwillingly. One common link among all men past, present and future is affliction and trial. It can range from the most minor inconvenience like waiting to see a physician to the patient endurance of a life-long troubled marriage.
The resulting problem for some is loss of faith. The remedy is nothing short of the reconciliation of suffering with complete acceptance of the will of God. This necessitates sound catechesis. The Lamb of God offered Himself completely to His heavenly Father in atonement for our sins. He endured an excruciating death to bequeath mercy on a sinful human race. We in turn surrender our wills to His. No catechetical program is complete without teaching this principle of acceptance.
That God sometimes permits evil in order to al low good is not self-evident. Our darkened intellects can scarcely place day to day events in their proper perspective, much less when there is some extended pain or suffering. Moreover, we tend to compare our crosses with those of others. This is a grave error for many reasons, but mostly because the possible benefit to one’s soul could be lost in what can turn into envy at the ostensible greener pasture. By focusing attention on the pain itself instead of trying to discover what is behind it, or what it is God that wants of us during each painful but intensely valuable moment of the cross, we lose the opportunity to grow in grace by being patient under trial.
When weakness yields to discouragement, realization of the need for divine grace should overpower temptation to despair. With out the loving mercy of God, and His grace to sustain us during trial, we will surely cave in under what can be an enormous burden.
The Church Speaks on Suffering
Beginning with the present pope and extending back through twenty centuries, the Church has always taught the value of suffering. The present Holy Father teaches that “The truth, revealed in Christ, about God the ’Father of mercies,’ enables us to ‘see’ Him as particularly close to man, especially when man is suffering, when he is under threat at the very heart of his existence and dignity.”18 In the same document, we are told that “Christ—the very fulfillment of the messianic prophecy—by becoming the incarnation of the love that is manifested with particular force with regard to the suffering, the unfortunate and sinners, makes present and thus more fully reveals the Father, who is God ‘rich in mercy.’”19
In his Apostolic Letter, the Vicar of Christ exhorts that “Salvation means liberation from evil, and for this reason it is closely bound up with the problem of suffering, and at the basis of human suffering there is a complex involvement with sin” (14, 15). The Pope is giving sober reminder of the seriousness of sin and its direct connection with suffering; human destiny could be at stake.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that one of the Church’s remedies for suffering is the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. Speaking about the union of a sick person with the passion of Christ, the writers entreat that “in a certain way he is consecrated to bear fruit by configuration to the Savior’s redemptive Passion. Suffering, a consequence of or igi nal sin, acquires a new meaning; it becomes a participation in the saving work of Jesus” (1521).
What the Church encourages is to consciously attach our sufferings to those of the suffering Savior, thus gaining immeasurable merit before the throne of mercy for oneself and for others.
Pseudo Suffering: Two Present-day Examples
Human suffering is always accompanied by a desire for it to end. No one enjoys pain, but the key to successful endurance during trial is found in the conscious surrender of one’s will to the will of God, trusting Him to effect some good from the experience of the misery. Because of a grave misunderstanding of the Christian meaning of suffering, there has been an attempt to do away with the greatest suffering required of every human being: bodily death.
Doctor-assisted suicide predates natural death. As such, this malevolent twist of human compassion is another symptom of the disharmony of the present age. The suffering one wishes to end is not so much the pain of a dear one, but one’s own pain. Right-to-die advocates are a minority, but their influence is legion. The secular worldview cannot comprehend that death is a punishment for sin. Death is not a “right;” it is at once punishment for sin and a manifestation of the mercy of God; one’s final opportunity to expiate the sins of a lifetime or even to complete the work of salvation.
Similarly, direct legal abortion can be an option in what can be perceived as unnecessary suffering. When a child is conceived unexpectedly—all too often the result of an illicit sexual union—a tiny innocent life is destroyed because the woman decides that the pain of the sudden “inconvenience” cannot be tolerated. When she makes the decision to destroy her own child, she has crossed the line into fantasy. Were she to simply acknowledge the presence of a new life and not the change this necessitates, she would receive from God the mercy she so desperately needs.
An understanding of the Christian meaning of human suffering can mitigate even a maelstrom of suffering. Appropriate teaching dispels fear of pain. What in fact underlies this grave misunderstanding of suffering is terror; on a natural level, we fear pain. “Contemporary paganism is characterized by the search for material well-being at any cost, and by the corresponding disregard—or to put it more accurately, fear, genuine terror—of anything that could cause suffering.”20
We have the potential to be raised to a nobility beyond imagination by living a lifetime of positive response to the will of God. Doctor-assisted suicide and abortion on demand devalue the human person. The option to choose life clearly demonstrates the preference of our wills to the will of God.
There can be no true peace of soul, no reward without the full surrender of our wills to the will of the Creator in every circumstance, every obstacle, and every apparent contradiction that just “happens.” The glory of a happy eternity is an undeserved reward for confident perseverance under trial.
We cannot even begin to cooperate with the will of God unless we have a clear understanding of the truths of the accumulated wisdom of two thousand years of Divinely revealed truth on the problem of evil and the mystery of human suffering. It can make the difference between despair and hope, between the unspeakable pain of separation from God for all eternity and the enjoyment of the vision of the Blessed Trinity for all eternity.
Carol Egan, wife and mother of five, writes from Montclair, Virginia.
End Notes
1 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 164.
2 Gaudium et Spes, 10.
3 John A. Hardon, Modern Catholic Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1980) 448.
4 Romans 8:28.
5 John A. Hardon, The Catholic Catechism, (New York: Doubleday, 1975) 177.
6 Ibid.
7 John A. Hardon, The Catholic Catechism, (New York: Double day, 1975) 79.
8 John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris, 7.
9 Hardon, Modern Catholic Dictionary, 198.
10 Salvifici Doloris, 14.
11 St. Thomas Aquinas, Compendium Theologiae, 142.
12 Hardon, The Catholic Catechism, 81.
13 John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris, 5.
14 John Paul II, 5.
15 John Paul II, 14.
16 Hebrews 2:10.
17 Francis Fernandez, In Conversation With God, (New York: Scepter, 1989) 164.
18 John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia, 2.
19 John Paul II, 3.
20 A. del Portillo, Pastoral Letter, 25 December 1985, 4.