As I look out the window of my home office, it is raining. It’s a steady rain. Not a downpour. Not a storm. Just a nice, steady rain. The forecast calls for storms later, and heavier rains and winds to come, but for now, it’s calm. It’s gray, but calm.
Such is life from time to time. So often the rains of life encircle heartache, despair, and sadness. Trials. Tragedies. Death. Often intermingled. Today’s readings, on the surface, talk about death.
But upon digging deeper, something emerges – Life. In the first reading from Kings, and then again in the Gospel, we hear a similar story. A widow, whose son is dead. In the first reading, Elijah comes to the house, and her boy had just stopped breathing from his illness. In the Gospel, Jesus encountered a funeral procession, the son lying dead, being carried in a coffin.
The rain clouds of sadness and despair hovering upon each of the widows, separated by generations, connected by their humanity.
And then we have Paul – the great Apostle Paul – in the second reading. Here was once a man, living as a devout Jew, even more so than many others. He was so devout, that he wanted to destroy the Church and eradicate the world of these followers of Christ. Anger and hate infused him. On the surface he may have seemed the devout, holy Jew fighting for the Law of God. But deep within, a storm was raging, and it was about to get out of control. His soul was dying.
Paul was a person – just like us. How many times in todays world do we see people fighting for a “good cause”, protesting wrongs against society, fighting for what they feel is right? Many people saw Paul as this person, fighting to uphold God’s Law.
But then many times, it goes too far. Pride and passions get the best of you. This fight can turn to anger. And the anger to hate. Unfortunately, we see these evils everyday, in every place. The storm clouds circle, the winds pick up. The rain starts to fall on your soul.
Sometimes, in reading Paul’s letters, I can almost feel the anger and rage he had before his conversion, when he refers back to that time in his life, and it comes out in his writing. And then I can also feel the remorse and sorrow he had, and how he felt he was truly not worthy for his role in God’s plan.
He is the perfect Apostle for humanity. And Jesus knew this. This was a chess move God saw from the very beginning. Just as perfect as it was for Jesus to come as a human and live with us and die for us, it is perfect to have someone like Paul, who did some pretty evil things, become perhaps the best evangelist for Christ. This shows us we all have hope. We all can receive God’s mercy
People knew his story. They knew who he was, the things he had done. And as he said in his letter today, what he preaches is not of human origin, that he did not come up with the words, nor did any other human. They came from Christ, the Son of God. Nothing so good could come directly from a sinner like Paul, or any other human being, because we’re all sinners. Mere humans could not conceive this stuff.
God has a plan for the rains that come into our life. In the first reading, and then again in the Gospel, people of the day felt that the reason tragedies occurred, and things like deaths occurred, was simply God punishing them for their own sins. I can’t help but think many people today think this as well.
It’s no secret that bad things happen. Tragedies and catastrophes occur. People die. But God doesn’t make these things happen. Many things occur in nature – storms, floods, earthquakes and countless other events – and people are affected and are simply in the way sometimes. Death became a part of life after the fall of Adam and Eve. But everything has its purpose.
But God doesn’t directly punish us for our sins in this life by inflicting tragedies upon us. Now, we receive consequences from our sins, and the choices we make. Everything has a consequence – good and bad. When we sin, we hurt ourselves, and we often hurt others. We hurt God.
We can’t look at more frequent, violent and extreme weather as a direct punishment from God for our sins. But perhaps the choices we make as humanity in how we pollute the earth and fail to respect the environment are helping to fuel these changes in the weather. Everything has a consequence. But as with the widows today, God did not punish them for their sins by taking their sons lives. And God does not rain down pain and affliction on us because we make bad choices.
On the contrary – he’s constantly trying to breath life into us.
The trials we face in life, are simply, just a part of life in this fallen world. There is a lot of good and beauty in the world, but bad things happen.
But then there is God, coming to us, at every moment, not punishing us, but having mercy, trying to breath the life back into us. He’s knocking on our door. He’s passing by us, crossing our path as we come around the bend. And sometimes, he reveals himself to us in amazing glory, in ways that we cannot explain, but can only feel.
He’s constantly coming to us, trying to help us through our pain, wanting to save us from death in our soul, so that we do not have eternal death. For every one of us, He has a plan. He’s had it from our very beginning. He has great things envisioned for each of us, and as life happens and we make mistakes, He’s not there to kick us while we’re down. But rather, he’s there to help us back up, and help us see the good, to see His glory, and what He can do. He uses our mistakes and failures to teach us, and teach others, how to be better people. Paul could not have been the Apostle he was had he not lived the life that he had lived. God always brings an abundance of good from the bad.
From the rains, life blooms. From the floods comes fertile soil. Christ brings a calm in the storm. He is always there, to offer us mercy and love, to cultivate life within us. Whether we choose to see it, and let Him work, and let go of ourselves, is up to us.
