Dear Friends,
 
God made everything, right? Actually, today’s First Reading from the Book of Wisdom tells us explicitly “God did not make death.” This is an important truth to keep in mind since so many people react to the death of a loved one with the question “Why did God decide to take them now? Why did they have to die? How is this God’s plan?” Well, the answer I often give is that God doesn’t decide to “take them”, it was not His plan that any of us would have to die. God’s initial plan for the human race was to live immortally in His friendship and grace. The entrance of death into the world was the foreseen - but not willed - effect of sin. The gift of our freedom entailed the dangerous possibility of rejecting God. Even though God knew that it would be abused, it was still impossible for us to love Him freely without the possibility of rejecting Him freely. Those are the necessary two sides of the coin of freedom.
 
Once our First Parents rejected the gift of immortal life in God’s grace, it threw all of Creation into chaos. Death entered in, human nature suffered a terrible wound, nature is no longer in harmony with itself or with humanity. This is the devastating effect of sin - something not willed by God, but allowed on account of our freedom. But why is God allowing so much sin, and death, and evil? That is the question that has an answer, but not an answer that will satisfy us when we are in the midst of evil, or suffering, or the loss of a loved one. We can comfort ourselves, however, with this truth: God is infinitely good, infinitely powerful, and infinitely loving; if He allows us to suffer, it is only because the glory to be obtained in eternity far surpasses anything we could ask for or imagine.
 
In Christ,  Fr Marotti