I am surprised you do not tell us that there must upon no account be martyrdoms, inasmuch as God, who does not ask for the blood of goats and bulls, much less requires the blood of men. I read this and wept….I wish I could always weep by never forgetting all I just read. Did we pray prayers of protection? image: Station of the Cross in Czestochowa / Shutterstock, Tagged as: This is also a false understanding of what many atheists believe and how many atheists approach questions about the existence of God. The question is…are there sins of commission or omission. Blessing to everyone for a wonderful Thanksgiving! Contrast the Catholic perspective on suffering with that of what is called the “Health and Wealth” gospel. 426 Indeed, out of love for his Father and for men, whom the Father wants to stve, Jesus freely These are just food for thought. This is not complicated to understand nor should it be. Because we are joined to Christ, our suffering is joined with His, and participates in the Redemption He accomplished. Nor did the Son in His human nature cease to see the Father (i.e. In this way, by embracing the cross of suffering given to us in this life, those in a state of grace may merit an eternal reward. THEOLOGY OF PASTORAL COUNSELING & SPIRITUAL CARE PCGR-6380-R01: Fall 2015 Wednesdays: 7:00-8:50 Kirk A. Bingaman, Ph.D. PURPOSE: The application of theology to situations of crisis and suffering requires Even their bodies were entirely subject to their soul, without any bodily defect.11 All created beings, excepting the angels, were subject to man in the state of innocence. Because God is love, He does not do everything Himself. That was the cup He asked the Father to take from Him, and why He sweat drops of blood. “This entire harmony of original justice, foreseen for man in God’s plan,” says the Catechism, was “lost by the sin of our first parents.”12 What we now see around us is not the original perfection and harmony of God’s creation, but a fallen world. And that is fully compatible with the truth that many atheists, especially in an age ensnared by the philosophy of scientism in which metaphysics is generally assumed to be some irrational superstition, do not see or know of evidence for the existence of God. For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing. He and his family live in Brighton, MI. For Christians, by contrast, the Creator of all things is a perfectly good, perfectly just,14 and perfectly loving Father. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? One can find meaning in that sense in this earthly life, even if it were true that each person permanently ceases to exist at the moment of death. The lower powers of their soul were held subject to their reason, without any disorder whatsoever. My scrupuloucity is what drove me to Catholicism( a Martin Luther 360 ) ; I was also concerned that when I did something good I was incurring God’s wrath “if” I felt good about the thing I did. For the good man is neither uplifted with the good things of time, nor broken by its ills; but the wicked man, because he is corrupted by this world’s happiness, feels himself punished by its unhappiness. That discomfort and Fr. Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head, and he fell to the ground and worshiped. And not only by His example, but by His grace and by the hope held forth of everlasting recompense, has He made pain and grief more easy to endure; “for that which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation, worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory.” (Rerum Novarum, 21), If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. This is my favorite topic of discussion. He is called to share in that suffering through which all human suffering has also been redeemed. A popular question among agnostics is “If there is a God why does he allow so much pain and suffering” How is one child born healthy and another born with a disability. He transformed them into motives of virtue and occasions of merit; and no man can hope for eternal reward unless he follow in the blood-stained footprints of his Saviour. My suffering I believe does not have to do with sin. Even in what I fear is no suffering at all, whether it be rational or not, He uses that very hopelessness and even irrational fear, perhaps the hopelessness He felt in His Willful Abandonment on the Cross, to instill that hope He began in me. Thanks for your imput Diane. God made all things such that they were in harmony, as the Catechism explains: The first man was not only created good, but was also established in friendship with his Creator and in harmony with himself and with the creation around him, in a state that would be surpassed only by the glory of the new creation in Christ. And what is the reason for the difference? I then started considering the statistical odds that my four could likely be chosen. from :redux on Vimeo. From a Christian point of view, the finger that the atheist points at God, blaming Him for all the suffering we experience, or using our suffering as an argument against God’s existence, is man blaming God, for what man freely did in disobedience to God.15. What is the great cancer, the one infinitely worse than physical cancer? What is God doing? There is, too, a very great difference in the purpose served both by those events which we call adverse and those called prosperous. According to the Church, the great cancer is sin, and it leads to hell, i.e. So why would he have such fear? Other Veritas lectures by Eleonore Stump on the problem of evil are available here. .divine life.” By the radiance of this grace all dimensions of man’s life were confirmed. Some of the greatest messages that I have ever heard on suffering were from my Reformed Baptist pastor. Just style, I guess, but it sounds harsh to me. It is still a good world — that is how we are able to recognize the resulting disharmony, against the background of the goodness and natural order of creation — but there is now disharmony in our world, a disharmony that God did not put here. Jesus suffered here on earth. Any theology is informed by experience and yet suffering is surprisingly one of our weakest theologies. <—– respectful comment. Wherefore, since the souls of the saints do not comprehend the Divine essence, it does not follow that they know all that can be known by the Divine essence–for which reason the lower angels are taught concerning certain matters by the higher angels, though they all see the essence of God; but each of the blessed must needs see in the Divine essence as many other things as the perfection of his happiness requires. (Update: I have discussed this in more detail in “Heroes of the New Covenant.”). As faith groups go, we are more accustomed to suffering and more accepting of it than many. I will be frank in saying that when I go to seminary, all I learn and take away will have to pass the gate of reason and faith inside me and match all my experience has shown me. EWTN is a global, Catholic Television, Catholic Radio, and Catholic News Network that provides catholic programming and news coverage from around the world. God, our Father, is like a loving parent who agrees to subject his child to a regimen of chemotherapy to cure a cancer, though the child does not see the need for the chemotherapy, because the child does not see the cancer or its danger.18 The comment by the person who said of the plane crash, “God would have kept them from crashing” is like the child who says to his parent, “If you loved me you wouldn’t be putting me through this chemotherapy.” The parent is thinking, “If only you could see the danger of this cancer, you would understand that I am subjecting you to this painful treatment only because I love you, and want you to live.” And this too, is the heart of our heavenly Father, when He allows us to endure the sufferings of this life. Some suffering is the result of the actions of other people, but much suffering is simply gratuitous, pointless, and outside the bounds of human control. Obviously, those won’t his exact words but you get the picture. 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