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PAGE 11 - The Georgia Bulletin, August 2, 1990
On suffering evil but
remaining ‘deeply good’
By Father Eugene LaVerdiere, SSS
CNS photo by Robert S. Halvey
Catholic News Service
There he was with a big smile on his
face, on the front page of a New York
daily newspaper.
It seems only yesterday that another
boy tied David to a pipe and beat him
up. When David refused to smoke crack,
the young assailant set fire to his
clothing and ran away.
Now, less than three months later,
David was celebrating his birthday, still
in the hospital but well on his way to
recovery. Fortunately, there are no
scars on his face. Nor are there any on
his spirit.
He had a message for the small group
of relatives and friends who gathered for
the celebration: “I would like to thank
everybody for thinking of me.” He also
had a message for young people
tempted by drugs: “I hope everybody
will be like me,’’and refuse drugs.
No one need look far for examples of
evil. In David Opont’s story there is the
pain he suffered, his bums, the grief and
anxiety of his immigrant family, the
fear of his neighborhood, the crack
culture and his 13-year-old attacker’s
lack of hope and violence. There is more
than one victim in this story.
Along with the evil, however, there is
a great deal of good in David’s story. If
one sees only the evil in this instance and
throughout life, then there is much that
has been missed:
The love and care of
parents and friends,
the dedication of
hospital personnel,
the messages and,
above all, the
wonderful smile on
the face of one who
suffered so much.
What happened to
David is a story of
good and evil which
have been with us longer than memory
allows.
No one escapes evil, even when its face
is not this obvious. There is violence, ad
diction, prejudice, envy, jealousy, racism
and a long list of other isms, all of which
come in many varieties.
But there is also good all around us. Its
face too is not always obvious.
Think of the desperately poor. And
then think of those who reach out to
them, and how they reach out to each
other.
And then there is the story of a mis
sionary from Central America who found
himself between two elderly black people
at Mass. At the Lord’s Prayer, people
were asked to join hands. Most seemed
to hesitate. Not these two.
“There I was,” said the missionary,
“between the two, one a woman, the
other a man, hands joined, our bodies
linked in faith. Their dry, withered black
hands with no strength sent waves of
power through me.... The magic of that
moment is still with me.”
At times we may feel overwhelmed by
evil. But good is always there, even if hid
den for a time.
When confronted by evil, we need to
remember the story of Adam and Eve.
They were created in goodness but form
ed an unholy alliance with evil. They tried
to be gods and grasp God’s own immor
tality. They learned they were not gods.
They were creatures. And in spite of the
evil they embraced, they could be saved.
The whole Bible is the story of their
salvation.
When confronted by evil, I think we
might also remember the story of David
Opont, the Haitian-American boy who
met so much evil and had to overcome
it all.
Remember, too, his smile. It is a young
boy's smile, surely, but it is also the smile
of one who has suffered evil but remains
deeply good.
(Father LaVerdiere is senior editor of
Emmanuel magazine.)
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
■ What image springs to mind when you hear the word
“evil”? Is it the stereotypical face of evil, utterly cruel and
cunning, always ready to harm others?
Evil is really highly complex.
With a keen eye for the workings of human nature,
certain writers like Flannery O’Connor, noted for her short
stories, showed how good and evil each may be found in
an individual’s life. Even where evil appears to dominate,
the roots of goodness remain. Ms. O’Connor seemed to
consider that part of human life’s mystery — and
complexity.
An eye fixed on the evil it sees may overlook something
good. Thus, in our day, attempts to nourish the roots of
goodness in an individual or a society often become the
focus of attention whenever the subject of evil arises.
Still, evil’s reality remains.
What are the roots of evil like? Some say evil’s roots
resemble indifference and apathy. Some say these roots
grow when peoole don’t believe their actions really matter,
not having recognized human interdependence.
Some say evil’s roots take hold when individuals or
societies become desperate and when self-interests over
shadow all other interests.
How would you describe the roots of evil?
David Gibson, Editor, Faith Alive
If one sees
only the evil in
any situation,
then there is
much that has
been missed...
Look again.
How to kill the real culprits
By Father John J. Castelot
Catholic News Service
Evil wears many faces. They leer at
us from the Bible’s pages.
For the Bible is the story of the con
flict between good and evil.
The beginning of the conflict is
dramatized in the story of the tempta
tion and fall. The culprits: human pride
and ambition.
People aspired to be “like gods.” They
wanted to call all the shots, to be
Creators in their own right; but they
became destroyers.
Especially in the first three Gospels,
we see Jesus dealing with the same
struggle, dramatized by the temptation
scenes in the Gospels of Matthew and
Luke. What destructive forces are at
work? Self-sufficiency, pride, overween
ing ambition — the real evils in the sug
gestions that Jesus turn stones into
bread, take a sensational dive from the
temple tower, establish a global political
empire.
These scenes point toward yet
another garden where the disastrous
choice made by Adam and Eve in the
first garden is shown to be reversed —
the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus
accepts his Father’s will for him, leading
to the cross, and love is victorious over
rebellion.
But the victory was not easily won.
The price was relentless resistance to
persistent evil.
In this struggle evil revealed its many
faces. Some were physical: illnesses like
paralysis, hemorrhage, leprosy,
epilepsy. Others were emotional, like
insanity and grief. The supreme evil was
death.
Curing these ills, even raising the
dead to life, was part and parcel of
Jesus’ victory over evil itself.
Moral evil fell to the power of his love.
—Before he cured the paralytic of his
physical paralysis, he declared his
liberation from moral paralysis: “Child,
your sins are forgiven” (Mark 2:5).
—When a notorious woman bathed
his feet with her tears, he conquered the
evil destroying her with the declaration,
“Your sins are forgiven” (Luke 7:48).
—At the end of the struggle, when
Jesus himself seems defeated by evil in
the guise of death, he issued a royal
decree of pardon and victory from the
throne of the cross: “Father, forgive
them, they know not what they do”
(Luke 24:34).
Sin, the worst of evils, has many
faces, but they disguise a basic trait, the
same as the original one: selfishness.
Sin is harmful to others. That is why
the sins St. Paul lists on various occa
sions are sins against the community:
“immorality, impurity, licentiousness,
idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry,
jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of
selfishness, dissensions, factions, occa
sions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies and
the like” (Galatians 5:19-21).
Even the sin that attracts most
popular attention, illicit sex, is evil
because it degrades another human per
son. It turns people into “things” used
for self-gratification, destroys them as
people with a God-given dignity.
Whatever the evil — physical, emo
tional, moral — Jesus conquered it. How
do people conquer evil? With the same
means he used: compassion and selfless,
forgiving love.
(Father Castelot is a Scripture scholar,
author and lecturer.)
Faith Alive! is published by Catholic News Service, 3211 Fourth St. N.E., Washington, D.C. 20017-1100. All contents copyright © 1990 by Catholic News Service.
FURTHER NOURISHMENT
■ Barry L. Whitney, author of What
Are They Saying About God and
Evil?, says the difficulty of reconcil
ing belief in God with the world’s suf
fering and anguish is “the most
serious threat in the minds of many
theologians to religious belief." But
after examining what contemporary
writers and Christian thinkers say
about the existence of evil, he notes
that still “there is much in life to
celebrate” and much to “assure us
that we are in communion with a
Presence which animates all life by
its care and concern.” (Paulist Press,
997 Macarthur Blvd., Mahwah, N.J.
07430. 1989. Paperback, $5.95.)