God Held in Evil Hands

Last updated on: July 6, 2018 at 7:51 pm by H.L. Vogl

God Held in Evil Hands 2018-07-06T19:51:07-04:00 H.L. Vogl

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Image via Pixabay.com

“Look, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is being delivered into the hands of sinners.”

— Matthew 26:45

It would be foolish to deny it: sometimes God’s presence is held in evil hands. This is the mystery of His Passion—that He let himself be handed over this way. And because the sacrifice of His Passion is perpetually offered, this is not an event locked-up in the past, but an ever present reality. We cannot expect to find Jesus only in beautiful and sanitized places. Sometimes we even find ourselves handed over to the power of evil men as we draw closer to Him and share in His suffering and divine nature.

The exposé of sexual abuse among the clergy continues with excruciating regularity. How many faithful have received the true Body and Blood consecrated by these abusers, placed into their hands and mouths by these evil men? How many have received Him from their abusers? How many have stopped receiving the Eucharist because it is too painful to approach to receive from these hands they cannot trust?

Some clergy do not physically commit abuse, but they betray their vocation and do evil to the souls entrusted to them with spiritual abuse or enabling the evil of others. The priest who tells a battered wife to return to her husband. The pastor who not only fails to teach his flock about the sacrificial social imperatives of justice, but even belittles and scolds people who do not fulfill his white bourgeois model of the good life. The priests who join in spreading falsehoods about the faith and character assassination of those who disagree with them on social media. A Catholic theoretically can look elsewhere for guidance, but the apparent authority of the priestly office often weighs too heavily for the laity to question their damnable words. We grapple with confusion and anguish when the same lips that speak the words of consecration also speak words of evil effect.

As our nation celebrates the declaration today that all men are created equal and endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, I also think of how these God-given rights are held in the hands of wicked men. The man who wrote those words, helping some Americans vindicate them, also owned slaves, and raped at least one of them. Our homeland is handed down to us from men who took it by force, deception, and genocide from the Native Americans. Even wars of noble purpose fought to ensure freedom from genocidal authoritarianism, such as World War II, were fought by a collection of men with individual motives ranging from the self-sacrificial to the murderous, whose actions ranged from heroic to raping and pillaging. As we give thanks for enjoyment of our rights to life and freedom of conscience, we must remember that at least some of the same hands that vindicated these rights for us wreaked terrible evil on others in the process, and acknowledge the generational suffering they still inflict today. Many others around the world still cannot exercise these rights today because of evil authorities withholding them.

What can we say when we see God’s Presence, in a Host or in a person, held captive in evil hands? The natural righteous impulse is to want to wrest Him away, but rarely do we have the ability to do that, and who are we to think we can rescue God? We are left to contemplate the mystery that He allowed Himself to be handed over this way, to share in our wretched human captivity. Listen to Him plea with us, “I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and stay awake with me.” Let us heed His call to stay awake with Him, and with every person made in His image held captive by evil hands.

Previous Post

July 2, 2018

Let’s Not Call It Socialism

Next Post

July 6, 2018 From White-Washed Sepulcher to the Chapel of Guadalupe

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Communion Conscience Homilies Mystery Uncategorized

Select a Month September 2022 June 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 April 2021 December 2020 November 2020 March 2020 December 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who was the oldest man recorded in the Bible?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Adam Methuselah Noah Jared