What Jesus reveals when bad things happen to us

 Is God a reason for bad things happening to us today? I just saw a video saying that bad things happening today show that God sends us a message so we will repent. Let us be good, let us prepare for the coming of Christ. Repent, God is making us return to him through these bad things happening to us. It is a sad picture about God. It makes God look bloodthirsty.

This idea that God is source of bad things happening is found already in the New Testament. Remember the story of the blind man in the 4th Gospel? We read that the disciples of Jesus ask about the reason why the man is blind: "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” [Jn 9/2]. God sends something bad against the man because the man, or his parents, has been bad. 

We read something similar in the Luke account. There we read about the issue of the massacre of Galileans done by Pilate, "Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices" [Lk 13/1]. The massacre is thus a kind of atonement, like the sacrificing of animals on the altar, to satisfy God who wants repentance from people.

Jesus replies. He does not say that God causes bad things to happen. When bad things happen they simply signal the need to be more vigilant. God is not the source and cause of the catastrophes happening around us--certainly not this covid pandemic. Yet God is not nothing and is not nobody in these situations. God is here somewhere and the Revelation of the Son is a clear example.

Let us think of the many bad things happening. The deaths of vulnerable people due to the covid virus. The rape of a woman in the street. The killing of innocent by a militia. The cheating done against workers in their workplaces, including their salaries. The loss of jobs. The breakdown of an educational system. Then there is the horrible climate change and the destructions occuring.  Etc. 

Here we find bad things happening; we find the destruction of lives, the negation of dignity, the defacement of hope. 

During the time of Jesus there was the Roman Empire dominating over the social lives of the people of Palestine. We know the role of crucifixions. They were done to show everyone else who's is charge, who's the boss around here. 

We know the story. The Jews were so frustrated, and among them were disciples of Jesus. They were all longing for liberation from the yoke of the Romans and the local political/religious authorities. They were longing for a Messiah who will liberate them. 

Jesus did not show himself as a political leader; Jesus did not take up arms, as opposed to zealots, for example. The disciples, during the pre-Easter time, were disappointed when they did not find in him the answer to their hopes for political liberation. 

What was the response of Jesus to the bad things happening? The response he gave was so unique, so unexpected.  In and through the bad things happening what did Jesus show? We can consider some points.

Fist is the "solidarity" of Jesus with all of humanity through the Incarnation. We see the solidarity of Jesus in culture. Jesus participated in a world where bad things happen and he himself experienced bad things happening to him.

Second is his trust and confidence in the Father. He knew that no matter how bad things got he had a Father who will stay by his side and will not abandon his very own Son. Then Jesus said that we too are children of the same Father. Jesus had full confidence in the Father that even in the midst of bad things happening to him he abandoned himself in the hands of his Father. On the third day the Father rose him from death. 

In the Catholic tradition there is no rejection of our being Image and Children of the Father. Never does the Father want bad things happening to us. Never does the Father shower us with bad thinbgs to make us turn to Him. Never. If today we feel we must "repent"and "turn back"to the Father, it is not because the Father will continue sending us bad things. It is rather because we realize the Love of God and we want to continue to hold on to that Love, recognize it as basic to our human reality. In the midst of this pandemic--and all the other bad things happening and will happen--we can be like Jesus maintaining full confidence in the Father who loves us and grieves when bad things happen to us. 

I remember, by memory, a prayer of St Therese of Lisieux: 

"You must navigate the tempestous sea of the world with the love and utter trustfulness of a child who knows that the Father loves him too much to forsake him at the hour of peril". 

 Then there is the prayer of Abandonment by Charles de Foucauld: 

Father, 

I abandon myself into your hands; do with me what you will. Whatever you may do, I thank you: I am ready for all, I accept all. Let only your will be done in me, and in all your creatures -I wish no more than this, O Lord. Into your hands I commend my soul: I offer it to you with all the love of my heart, for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself, to surrender myself into your hands without reserve, and with boundless confidence, for you are my Father.

We can think of people who love us--family members, friends--who make the effort to accompany us in our own grieving and enter into solidarity with us in their own limited ways. They too, like Jesus, come to us, stay with us, walk with us in our darkness.