In Communist countries not so long ago, the media
never reported earthquakes, floods, train wrecks, disasters of all kinds, and
other tragedies. Such occurrences were considered as the negation of the then
prevailing dogma according to which the Soviet man must of necessity control
all the events of the planet. The ideal of such a society being success, and a
today always more glorious than yesterday, all disasters must therefore be
concealed, denied. Catastrophes occur only in capitalist countries.
Now the society in which we live is in fact
dominated by this same idol of success, of perpetual youth, of obligatory
efficiency. Human pride, which tries strenuously to do without God and His
laws, is unable to give meaning to earthly distresses and even simply to admit
them. Among us, it is true that we are informed of our ordeals either by word
of mouth, or by the press, radio, and television, but inevitably with
indignation, protests, and accusations.
In short, the setback should not have occurred,
and that is why we immediately look for the culprits that caused it. If
something goes awry, then certainly somebody did not do his duty and should be
condemned. For instance, it is even difficult to admit that an earthquake could
not be foreseen and avoided. Why did not those responsible arrange everything
so as to exclude all damage of goods and persons? Likewise, regarding the
recent bad floods. A number of mayors and magistrates expect proceedings to
start against them. . . It is certainly true that sometimes one sins by
omission, but it seems that this clumsy search for culprits in all our
misfortunes often has this strange idea as its underlying motive: man must be
the absolute master of all, even of nature itself. To admit that certain
calamities are natural and inevitable would be to agree that the human
condition is fragile and, in the final reckoning, a state of death.
In the past, the faithful Christian accepted
mishaps, seeing in trials a means God makes use of to punish us for our
aberrations or to purify us and to prepare us for eternity. Today, a disaster
is not seen at all as a challenge to faith or as a stimulus to abandon
ourselves into God's hands, but rather just as a provocation to anger. Now
anger supposes an enemy to shoot at, to unload on. Man's failure is a scandal
and unacceptable. From the moment man wants to free himself from God, without
really having the power, he needs to feel himself a victor. Success is for him
more necessary than the air he breathes. He knows well, however, that "success"
is not a name of God — at least not of the God of Christian revelation. But as
in every error there is a grain of truth, so when the hour arrives that will
put an end to history and reveal the Kingdom of God in all its grandeur, when
at last the new heavens and the new earth will appear, it is then that we will
be able to say that God's name is Victory.
The idolatry of success in our wounded humanity
reveals itself in the great illusion that tries to mask the enormous defeat
called death. The human victories of science and technology vanish with this
defeat, this last enemy that will be overcome by the resurrection of Christ.
The desire for success inscribed in the depths of our
being is certainly not at all condemnable in itself, for it is the natural
object of all we undertake, even if it is not always attained. Success in our
existence represents, without a doubt, a true value, a good that we call
"merit" in our Christian tradition. We have “to merit" heaven
even though, in reality, it is a question of a gratuitous gift of God. But
personal success is altogether compatible with material failure; the sick, the
unfortunate, the handicapped can have a greater dignity, merit, and moral worth
than the worth of celebrities written up in widely circulated newspapers. It is
man's lot to live with failure, but likewise to lay hold of suffering and to
use it as raw material for his human and divine success, his merit, his
salvation, and his glory.
Yet the temptation certainly exists among us to
want to establish God's Kingdom already on this earth. This is precisely, mark
well, the temptation that Jesus repulsed in the desert at the beginning of His
public ministry and preaching of the Gospel: "The Kingdom of God will not
be realized through a historic triumph resulting from an ever-increasing
ascendancy, but rather by God's victory over the ultimate unchaining of evil,
which will make His Bride descend from heaven." This is our hope.
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