Dear friend,
I prayed before the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament for you before attempting to answer your question because it is His grace that helps us to understand Him more than our words—though words can be a great help. You are not alone. You can be sure that when I mentioned you to Him, He was well aware of you and your situation. Now it is time for you to be more aware of Him. First of all, He is not just a bigger version of us. When thinking of Him, we need to think outside the human box. He is beyond anything we can imagine. He has no limits. He is infinitely good and loves us in an infinite way. For our limited human minds, this remains an abstraction. We have no experience of anything that is infinite—with one exception: the second Person of the Holy Trinity, Jesus. He joined us in our humanity and lived a human life. On Good Friday He showed us something of infinite love by the extent of the suffering that He willingly endured. Suffering, we can understand! That an infinite God would allow Himself to share our human life to the degree of being totally disvalued, and tortured until He died, tells us something of what His infinite love must be. Certainly, that infinite love for us was not exhausted by His passion, but it certainly gives us a window to what it consists of.
Good Friday transcends time. It covers the lives of every human being that has ever lived or will live. It shows us how He stands shoulder to shoulder with us
in every situation of our lives. The suffering He gives us is a share in His passion. Through such suffering, He offers us an opportunity to love Him back. We don’t have to. We can curse Him for it. Love is always a free choice. But in the face of all that He willingly endured, love is the most appropriate response.
He created us to love Him because it is of the greatest benefit to us. You gave a list of ways you have suffered in your life. Until now, you have been seeing them from a purely human perspective—beginning with you. Now, you need to look at your life, beginning with Him. After all, He came first—and in reality, He must always come first.
He designed you and your life that you might eventually know Him and love Him as the result of that knowledge. He didn’t give you an alcoholic father, a daughter with type 1 Diabetes and financial difficulties to punish you. You prayed that your son give up alcohol and he did. The fact that he died on that same day does not mean that He didn’t hear your prayer. He took him after he got it right! That had to be the best time for your son to meet Him for all eternity. What seemed like such a tragedy from a purely human standpoint, could very well be the very best thing that could have happened. God alone knows what time it is. He alone knows the very best time for us to come home.
The answer that the old Baltimore Catechism gives for your question is: God made me to love and serve Him in this life that I may be happy forever with Him in heaven. It’s still a very good answer.
I suggest that you spend some time daily, looking at a crucifix and reflecting on the love for you that you find there.
Fr. Vincent Serpa, O.P.
