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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.)