Some Sundays the readings are more uplifting than other Sundays. Job was having a bad day. "Life is drudgery. Sleepless nights…." And even though he was miserable, time went by so quickly. I think most of us who are adults have experienced some of that. Life can be drudgery at times. A simple question – why does evil exist? It does. We know that. I look back in the last century (its hard to refer to the twentieth century as the last century), and you look at characters like Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin. Remember, he killed six million because they were Jews and a few million others in war. Stalin killed even more, some twenty million just to consolidate his personal power. And even before that, characters like Nero and even today, Sadaam Hussein. How could he kill twenty thousand Kurds with poison gas to consolidate his power? There is evil. It’s real. And if we needed to be reminded of that, we were reminded of that on September 11 of 2001. Evil men do evil things. I guess in a kind of generic way, you could define evil as when the innocent suffer. Innocent people. When bad things happen to good people. And all of us have experienced that on a personal level. I was just thinking, when I was preparing my comments for today, in a flash, three incidents came to mind since I’ve been a priest, where the innocent suffered terribly. I remember one couple who wanted a baby, and they were always praying for a baby. "Father, pray that I become pregnant." And finally she became pregnant and the grandparents were more excited than the parents were. I know some of you grandparents, "When are you going to have children!?!" And so, the whole family was happy. At three in the morning, this little girl was born, and she was dead. She had strangled on her umbilical cord. And that family tried to call me to the hospital. I was away that night, and they couldn’t get a hold of me. And I’ll tell you, to this day they are angry with me, because I wasn’t there for them. There was another boy who died at the age of twelve. His name was Brian. He was a great kid. He was an altar server. He played the tuba in the school. Brian had leukemia and it took him a year of dying. He had ups and downs, and good news, and finally the disease overcame him. And he died at five in the morning on a Saturday. And they called me, and I went over to the house. The mother was very active in the Church, and his dad wasn’t. And I’ll never forget it – his body was as white as that paper. And I had seen him two days before and he looked OK. As white as that paper, and he was like marble, dead, cold. And his father glared at me with, frankly, hatred in his eyes. In one other case, a young mother on her way to work, this young woman was Lebanese-American, very emotional, the Lebanese. She had three kids, beautiful kids, with those big eyes like the Lebanese and the Palestinians have. And she was taking her kids to daycare and she was going to work. The SUV rolled over and she was thrown out and killed. They surmised that she unbuckled her belt to get the baby bottle or something. And she was killed. And at the rosary, someone warned me, they said, "Father, watch out for her husband. He might do you harm." He was really angry. As a matter of fact, he had cursed God, literally. And cursed me. You know why they are angry at me. It’s not Carney – it’s Christ. They know that a priests actions are sona-Christi – in the person of Christ. They know that a priest is an altar-Christi, another Christ. As unworthy as we are, personally. They knew they weren’t angry at me, they were angry at Jesus Christ. And I was there to represent Him, at those difficult times. After one of the masses this weekend, someone said, "It must be difficult." And I said, "You know, it isn’t. Its just, in those situations I know why I am a priest. I know why I am there. And there’s no place I’d rather be, than there with that family at that time, even if they hate me. Because that’s why I am a priest." And there’s other times that I would prefer not to be a priest, like when you call on me for marriage counseling. I am a terrible marriage counselor. Deacon Bob is excellent! Oh, he’s good. You know, they are thinking, "Why did this happen?" And they look at me like, "Why?" and I am supposed to say, "I don’t know. I am sorry. I am so sorry. I don’t know." But, you know, there are answers. There are intellectual answers. We know that we have free will and that’s part of the problem. We know that God created the world perfectly, but sin then entered, and with sin, corruption and death and disease. We know that there’s an element of chance and luck. But you can’t say that to people. I have even researched. And they will say, "If God was the creator, then did God create evil?" I researched that in the Suma Theologica written by St. Thomas Aquinas. And he says, No. Of course God doesn’t create evil. He creates good. But there are secondary causes that create evil. Here’s what he said. Can you imagine me answering someone who is in grief, saying, "Well, the effect of the deficient secondary cause is reduced to the first non-deficient cause, as regards to what he has in being in perfection, but not regards as to what has effect. etc." End of that conversation. No, those answers are intellectually OK, and in some cases even profound, but they leave you wanting. They are worse than no answers. There’s also scripture. Now, scripture is the word of God. "It rains on the just and the unjust alike." "There’s a time for everything under the sun." "We accept good things from God – should we not accept evil?" That’s the word of God, and so I don’t want to mess with that. But I know you do at those times. It doesn’t satisfy. It doesn’t really answer the question.

The story of Job is addressing this question of evil. Job was an allegory written seven centuries before Christ, about a very rich and good man who was a chieftain. And the story of Job is that God is ranting about Job to the devil, "You know, Job is really good." And the devil says, "I could turn him against you." And God says, "No way. Not Job." He says, "You give me Job, and I’ll turn him." And he says, "OK, you can have Job. Just don’t kill him." Well, the devil kills everybody that Job loves, he loses his great wealth. We all picture Job sitting on a dung pile covered with festering sores. His wife says to him, "Curse God and die." Talk about a family dispute! Those are some hard words. His friends tell him he must be a great sinner to suffer so greatly. And finally, Job says to God, "Explain this. You know I am innocent." And God says to Job, "Quiet, Job. I’m God. I don’t have to explain anything to any body." Of course, Job is faithful. His family is restored. His wealth is restored. And somehow through the suffering he becomes more faithful. But that great story, the story of Job, is one of the great stories of literature of all time. But it doesn’t answer the question of evil, either. But there is an answer, and that answer is right there. And you don’t need words to go with that – the cross of Jesus Christ. Somehow, without being able to understand it with words, that’s the answer to evil, the cross. I love this crucifix that we have in this parish. When I first came here, I said to someone, "It’s a little ugly." In fact, it was Mary (She’s not here, so I can talk about her.). And Mary said, "The cross is ugly, Father." Thank you. Lesson learned. That’s the answer for us. That’s why we Christians glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. That’s why Paul said, "I preach Christ and I preach Him crucified." And its not only to look at the cross, its to enter it, to embrace it, to carry it. "If you love me, you must pick up your cross every day and follow me."

Let me read to you a story written by Peggy Noonan. Some of you know her. She writes for the Wall Street Journal. I believe she was Reagan’s speech writer, one of them. She’s a great writer, and I think you’ll agree. She wrote this: "A few weeks ago I wrote a column called "God is Back," about how, within a day of the events of September 11^th, my city was awash in religious imagery. Prayer cards. Statues of saints. It all culminated in a way, in the discovery of the steel girder cross that emerged last week from the wreckage." Do you know the cross that she’s talking about? That’s at the World Trade Center? There’s a piece of that in Albuquerque now. "The cross un-bent, un-broken, un-melted, perfectly proportioned and duly blessed by a Catholic friar on the request of the rescue workers who seem to see meaning in the cross’ existence. So do I. My son, a teenager, finds this hilarious, as does one of my best friends that tease me to my delight. But I told them, ‘Boys, this whole story is about good and evil. Its about the clash of good and evil.’ If you are of a certain cast of mind, it is of course meaningful that the face of the evil one seemed to emerge with a roar from the furnace that was Tower 1. You have seen the Associated Press photo, and the photos that follow. The evil face roared out of the building with an ugly howl. And then in a snap of the fingers it lost form and force and disappeared. If you are of a certain cast of mind, it is of course meaningful that the cross, which to those of its faith is imperishable, did not disappear. It was not crushed by the millions of tons of concrete that crashed down upon it, did not melt in the furnace. It rose from the rubble, still there intact. The face of the evil one was revealed and died. The cross survived."

This is how God speaks to us. He is saying, "I am." He is saying, "I am here." He is saying, "And the force of all the evil of all the world will not bury me." That’s the answer. That’s the answer to evil. The cross.