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Making Space for God in the Face of Grave Evil

How do we pray in the face of grave evil and personal disaster?  Often grave evil has a stifling affect on prayer.  One feels overwhelmed and helpless. In this despondency, the mind struggles to search for God’s presence, if it struggles at all.  In the face of unexpected disaster, the crushing burden of difficult questions torments the soul.  Yet, the world in which we live and in which we pray has always been riddled with the mystery of grave and overwhelming evil.  How do we begin to pray when God’s love seems so absent and the reason for our hope so difficult to affirm?

Sometimes it feels impossible to pray and prayer is reduced to its most essential and simple movement – the cry of the heart for mercy.  On this point, Pope Emeritus Benedict’s Spe Salvi refers to Cardinal Nguyen van Thuan’s experiences during his long internment in Vietnam (see #34).  Sometimes, there was nothing the Cardinal could offer from his heart and all he could do was repeats passages from Scripture or prayers he memorized.

I have also spoken to those close to death who complain about the same kind of difficulty in prayer.  They want to want to be able to pray – but there are no words, no thoughts, no feelings, nothing to intuit, nothing to imagine, nothing.  In such moments, God seems so absent and in effort to pray, if effort can be made at all, seems so wasted.  So they repeat simple short phrases they have memorized, “now and at the hour of our death” or else “our hope does not disappoint” or even “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…”  

In such cases, all that is left to the soul seems to be a sort of last vestige of prayer, a feeble desire to raise one’s heart to God, a desire hidden in the overwhelming pain that, in this moment and under these circumstances, cannot realize fulfillment and yet chooses to hope anyway.  It is an effort to pray or to desire to pray baptized in heartbreak and dismay — and in this annihilation, we have already entered deep into the infallible prayer of Christ Crucified.

Who is not reduced to this kind of prayer when the mystery evil crushes the innocent and vulnerable?  When we learn about a friend’s daughter paralyzed after a fatal accident, when we learn about explosives killing people at a foot race, or when we learn about the horrific slaughter of babies who having survived callous attempts to abort them were subjected in the most inhumane brutality, it is difficult to pray – the heart is numb, but not our hope.  When the simple words of the Our Father, a Hail Mary, or even the whispered name of Jesus is all that can be offered — this is what the Lord needs us to offer and this with what love we can muster: for even in the poverty of our prayer, the most frail effort to pray makes space in the world for God to act.  So we find the courage to pray.  The power of God is at work in so many hidden ways that, even when our conversation with the Him is reduced to nothing else than the most humble cry of the heart, the Lord unleashes anew that flood of hope that helps the world begin to see the triumph of good over evil even in face of heart-breaking circumstances.

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Road to Hope

Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan while Archbishop of Saigon turned prisons in Vietnam into places of hope not only for his fellow prisoners but also for their guards.  The Communists tried to break him by torturing and tormenting him.  He endured nine years of solitary confinement in his thirteen years of prison. Humiliated, mocked, threatened, beaten – sometimes it was difficult for him to utter even simple vocal prayers.  Yet he was never overcome.  He kept extending the hand of forgiveness and friendship to his tormentors.  He never failed to find ways to encourage his fellow inmates.  In the most difficult situations, Christ crucified gave him all he needed and he learned to rely on Him alone.  By keeping his eyes on the Lord, he understood that he was on a journey even in prison, and that the trail he was blazing was a road to hope:

“If you desire to reach the end of this Road to Hope, you must be fearless, and to be fearless means not wandering about aimlessly.  How many people stood beside our Lord at the foot of the cross?”
Road to Hope, trans. Peter Bookallil, Boston: Pauline Books and Media (2001), 9.
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You are a Temple of the Holy Spirit

Some points for prayer-
Since the Blessed Trinity is living in you, 
you are the temple of God.  
You are also a holocaust, a word of unending praise, 
a flower of great beauty offered up to God.   
Francis Xavier Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan, 
The Road to Hope: A Gospel from Prison


Here there is an interiority, 
a depth which lies beyond the merely natural, 
as far beyond the natural depth of soul 
as the “realm” where God is enthroned, 
and where our “glory to God in the highest” seeks Him, 
and is beyond all thoughts and feelings of natural sublimity.  
This interiority has been given to us by Baptism, 
and now Christian practice must lift it 
beyond the natural world of feeling and thinking.  
Romano Guardini, 
Learning the Virtues that Lead you to God

The Father spoke one Word, which was his Son, 
and his Word he speaks always in eternal silence, 
and in silence must it be heard by the soul.  
St. John of the Cross, 
Sayings of Light and Love

In the heaven of her soul, the praise of glory 
has already begun her work of eternity.  
Her song is uninterrupted, 
for she is under the action of the Holy Spirit 
who effects everything in her; 
and although she is not always aware of it, 
for the weakness of nature does not allow her 
to be established in God without distractions, 
she always sings, she always adores, 
for she has, so to speak, 
wholly passed into praise and love 
in her passion for the glory of her God.
Blessed Elisabeth of the Trinity, 
Heaven in Faith
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Francis Xavier Nguyen Thuan – Road to Hope

Cardinal Thuan was just declared venerable on October 22. A priest of Vietnam, he was into police custody in 1975 only months after being named the coadjutor archbishop in Saigon. Thirteen years later, nine of those in solitary confinement, he was released from prison into house arrest and then expelled from his native land in 1991. He served the Church in Rome until his death in 2002. While in prison, anxious for his flock, he found a way to sneak messages to those entrusted to his care. Many of them are challenging:

“Is your life merely a continuous chain of events with time for sleeping, for rising, for eating, for study, for work, for relaxation, watching television, or reading newspapers? If there is not unifying element to your life, it will be meaningless. That element is the love of God. With it your life will change and all your actions will testify to God’s presence within you.”

And even more poignant:

“If you do not advance along the Road to Hope or aim at holiness, you belong to neither the younger nor the older generation, but to the generation of the dead. How wonderful and attractive it would be if, in this age of weakness, there should arise a generation of saints! God desires this, and you should desire it for your own life.”

The Road to Hope, Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2001. p. 152-153

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