Pursued by Truth
Last week, as the sun went down on the vigil of the first Sunday of Advent, I found out that one of my friends was dead. He had been hiking and was approached by two men who shot him.
At the news I was speechless. No words came to my mind, no concepts, no ideas, no spiritual platitudes that could explain away the horror of my friend’s death.
I called a mutual friend and we wept together, trying to find meaning in something so senseless, so tragic.
As I spoke to my friend, a person of great faith and great doubt – a combination to which I can relate – he said, “This shows me that this is God’s world.” As he went on to explain what he meant, I observed the first thought that came into my mind:
What do you mean God’s world? Where was God when our humble, gentle friend was shot down in cold blood?
Over the next few days I considered this question.
A few weeks ago a Jehovah’s Witness stopped me as I took a walk and asked me, “Who rules the world?”
I marveled at the chutzpah it takes for someone to try and convert a nun before I responded, “God.”
The man smiled, delighted that I had stepped right into his trap.
“No sister, Scripture tells us that Satan, the prince of darkness rules the world.”
He then went into a long-winded speech about the powers of Satan. When he had finished his speech I felt the words well up in me and I said, “But God always has more power than Satan. Always.”
I thought back on this moment as I contemplated my friend’s death. The rational answers that came to my mind did little to assuage the pain. Maybe the killers were on drugs, maybe, maybe, maybe. I soon realized that there are no realities, no words, no explanations that will explain away the horror of my friend leaving the world in the way that he did. Without excuses, I found the pain of carrying this evil unbearable. I am powerless, wordless in the face of the yawning darkness that swallowed my friend, a bitter poison that simmers beneath every war, every act of violence, every jealousy, every hostility, every hateful word, every sin.
The only thing that I can do as I wrestle with this evil is to gaze upon the Cross. When I do, I begin to understand in the whispered midst of obscurity. God did do something when murderers pointed a gun at my friend. He stood between them, his arms outstretched, in a moment 2,000 years ago that continues to break into the present world. God came to earth and subjected himself to the violence of sin, the horror of a tragic and senseless death, the despair of dying alone. My friend was murdered and so was Jesus. God did not spare himself from the violence of our sin. And even though gazing upon Jesus, an innocent God-man, dying on the cross does not give me all the answers, it is the only thing that gives any semblance of meaning to the violent, vicious killing of a humble, gentle man.
As Advent begins, the time of waiting for Jesus to come again, I feel more than ever the anxious expectation, the straining, desperate desire to see God “rend the heavens and come down” (Isaiah 64:1)
We are suffering, thirsting for justice, an end to war, riots and senseless violence. Sin and evil are all around us. Every day these brothers of iniquity try to amass troops in our souls.
Why are You not here, why do we sometimes feel so alone in a fight with the odds stacked against us?
But you have come. You have broken through the darkness. You have lit a candle in the scratched blackness of the night. You have injected suffering and evil with an antidote, a seed of grace. And I patiently wait for you to come again, for the fulfillment of the work you have begun, the work that is at times difficult to see beneath the tears and evil of this world.
Come Lord Jesus.
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