Good from evil,
evil from good
By Fr.
ROY CIMAGALA, roycimagala@gmail.com
July 25, 2015
The twists and turns of life
today have been such that we can derive good from evil, and
vice-versa, evil from good. We have to learn how to properly deal with
this peculiar phenomenon so that we can manage to reach our ultimate
goal without getting lost along the way.
We can derive good from evil
because God will always be around, providing us with all the grace
that we need, as well as his eternal mercy and compassion when we
happen to be downed by our weaknesses, the temptations and trials
around, and sin itself. There is nothing impossible with God. He can
take on any evil and nullify it.
And we can also fall into an
evil state in spite of the many good things around precisely because
we can dare to separate ourselves from God and just make use of the
many good things today, like the new technologies, without him. Sooner
or later, these good things will just spoil us and lead us into evil.
A more serious case is when
we can be endowed with good if not superior intellectual and spiritual
powers but fail to refer them to God. Our goodness, superiority and
righteousness could occasion pride, vanity and self-righteousness.
This is the classic example of how evil can be derived from good.
The crucial point in this
issue is that we should try our best to be with God always, something
that we have to work out day in and day out. Our petition to God
should be something to the effect that we feel a sharp pain right in
our flesh, like a wound freshly inflicted, once we distance ourselves
from God.
God’s patience is infinite.
And so, we should never despair whenever we fall into some immoral
predicament that may seem persistent. These days, for example, when we
cannot but be affected by all sorts of sweet poisons like consumerism,
materialism, hedonism, technologism, etc., we should see to it that we
get hold of at least a shred of hope in God’s mercy and compassion.
We all know that our best
intentions and best efforts would not be enough to confront the daily
onslaught of these sweet poisons and blinding false lights. To
dominate these things which usually have a possible double effect, we
need to pass by a learning curve, and so we cannot avoid committing
some mistakes, big and small.
Especially in the beginning
of the process of mastering the many new things that can have dual
effects on us, we cannot avoid dirtying ourselves from time to time.
And even if we may already achieve a certain level of dominion over
them, the danger of falling can still take place. And in fact, the
falls in this stage is graver and more painful than those in the
beginning stage.
And yet we should never lose
hope. Somehow, even if we hate sin and do our best to avoid falling,
God allows these falls to take place to give us a more intimate
knowledge of our weakness and of God’s ever powerful mercy.
The temptations and falls
can still be useful since they can serve to enrich and deepen our
knowledge of things in general, something that we may miss if we have
not been tempted and have not tasted the bitterness of our falls and
the precious lessons they can give.
That’s why saints have also
been sinners. We can cite the example of St. Mary Magdalene whose deep
contrition and love for Christ sprang from her grievous sins. And big
sinners have also become big lovers of God, as in the case of St.
Augustine.
It would seem that while
it’s true that the corruption of the best is the worst, the reverse
can also be said – the redemption of the worst is the best. This is a
thought that should come to our mind whenever we happen to fall into
some grave sin. There’s always hope. God is willing to forgive and to
give us more than we deserve.
Let’s be a Mary Magdalene or
an Augustine, or a Peter or the prodigal son, the lost coin, the lost
sheep. Let’s make our sinfulness a powerful motive to go back to God.
Let us live out those words of St. Paul that it is when he is weak
that he is strong. Let’s fill ourselves with the conviction, based
again on St. Paul’s words, that where sin has abounded, God’s grace
has abounded even more.
Let’s learn to derive good
from evil, and to avoid turning good into evil.