past journaling

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Once in a while I find an old journal notebook and begin thumbing through it.  Today I found an entry from just after I began my ministry at St. Cletus.  Most of you know that while I was transitioning to St. Cletus, my best friend was battling cancer.  The entry was pretty explicit in my reaction to a bad night he was having.  I won't go into details as I can still feel his pain after two years and the dilemma I was feeling too.

On another page, however, I found an entry that might have turned into a bulletin article or possible homily.  It was about Creation and the progression of time from Genesis onward.  I asked many questions about just how God's plan unfolded -- man's fall from grace, the great flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, Babel, Moses and Pharaoh, 40 years in the desert, the prophets and kings -- there is SO much.

I've wondered at times whether it actually took God thousands of years to decide how He was going to restore man to grace.  Or was Jesus (the Son) simply waiting at the door for all of those years waiting for the Father to say something like "now."  If you look at the writings of the prophets, we might believe that God was just waiting for "the right time."  Others might believe that God was just being mean to the humans He created from the beginning in His image and likeness.  I mean, why not just have the Son go to the Garden of Eden and vanquish the serpent?

What about when Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the Temple where Simeon the prophet told Mary that her heart would be pierced?  Imagine how much conflict there probably was within her since just 9 months earlier she was visited by the Archangel who said she was to become the mother of the Son of the Most High?  WHY? WHY? WHY?

But then consider this:  what has happened to the world SINCE the Resurrection?

Random thoughts:  Mount Vesuvius wiping out Pompeii?  Why so many various religions that are Christian but not Catholic?  Where was God during WWII or Korea?  Is there life on other planets in galaxies "far, far, away?  How will the world actually end?

Amazing just how many questions have been asked from the very beginning, yet all God ever asked of us was to love one another.

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