Msg Base:  AREA 5  - ASK FATHER            CIN ECHO   AMDG
  Msg No: 319.  Tue  6-30-92 11:03  (NO KILL)  (MAILED)
    From: Father Mateo
      To: Loren Macgregor
 Subject: Suffering of Children

ÚÄ
³ Father, a message on one of the CIN bulletin boards started me thinking.
³ A young woman re-stated an age-old question:  "How can there be a God
³ when there is so much suffering in the world?"  Specifically, she was
³ talking about an infant who was in deep pain from AIDS, which the child
³ acquired in the womb.
³  
³ In struggling to find an answer to her question, a very vague memory
³ from early cathechism was touched off.  At some point I believe I was
³ taught (or heard, at any rate), that innocent children who suffered pain
³ had a "special place" in heaven.  I tried without success to track down
³ a reference to this; one of the Sisters at the Paulist Book Center
³ thought perhaps I was thinking of Limbo and was imperfectly
³ remembering the plight of children who die before Baptism.
³  
³ Do you perhaps have some reference on the subject?  It may seem a small
³ thing, but it has been bothering me since the memory first surfaced.
³  
³ God Bless,
³                 -- Loren MacGregor
ÀÄ[LM=>FM]
 
Dear Loren,
 
Suffering, especially undeserved suffering, is a mystery as old as
humankind. I have three books to suggest for your reading and
meditation:
 
1) The Book of Job in the bible;
2) C.S. Lewis. The Problem of Pain. Macmillan. ISBN 0-02-086850-2;
3) Rabbi Harold S. Kushner. When Bad Things Happen to Good People.
Avon Books. ISBN 0-380-60392-6.
 
Our Blessed Mother was called by the Angel Gabriel ``full of grace''
and she was assured, ``The Lord is with you.'' Her cousin Elizabeth,
filled with God's Holy Spirit, called her ``blessed among women''.
But only months later the prophet Simeon told her that her Son would
be ``a sign of contradiction'' and that the sword of suffering would
pierce her heart because of Him. All this is recorded by St. Luke in
his Gospel, chapters 1 and 2.
 
Isaiah prophesied about Jesus: ``He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.... Surely he has borne
our griefs, and carried our sorrows ... smitten by God and afflicted,
He was wounded for our transgressions.... The Lord has laid on Him
the iniquity of us all.... Because He poured out His soul to death,
and was numbered among the transgressors, yet He bore the sin of
many and made intercession for the transgressors'' (chapter 53).
 
We live in a broken world. Our natures are wounded by sin. Christ
came to heal us and our world, and we are challenged to accept Him
through a faith which works through love. We express this faith and
love when we move to relieve suffering and remove injustices. We
believe in Christ crucified, who challenges us to be His disciples by
taking up our cross every day. St. Paul quotes an ancient Christian
hymn: ``If we have died with Him,
        We shall also live with Him.
        If we endure, we shall also reign with Him.
        If we are faithless, 
        He remains faithful--
        For he cannot deny Himself''
                        (2 Tim. 2:12).
 
We must take care and pray not to join the ranks of the faithless.
God entered our world and took our pain upon Himself to redeem us
from sin and deliver us from evil.  The full term of that deliverance
is Heaven, not earth.
 
I wanted to quote Revelation 21:3-4 about Heaven for you, but I'm out
of space. Please read it for yourself.
 
                                        Sincerely in Christ,
 
                                        Father Mateo