Today, Laetare (LAY-TAR-AY) Sunday, named for a Latin word meaning “rejoice,” marks Lent’s halfway point. Our readings speak of God’s love: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish, but might have eternal life.” Beautiful. Yet, as practical Americans, we might wonder: why this strange, marvelous path, the sacrifice of God’s Son on the cross? Why not a simpler, easier way to save us?
Perhaps this question that touches the deepest mysteries might connect also to the problem of evil. The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes the problem of evil in this way: “If God the Father almighty, the Creator of the ordered and good world, cares for all His creatures, why does evil exist?” The Catechism then says, “To this question, as pressing as it is unavoidable, and as painful as it is mysterious, no quick answer will suffice. Only Christian faith as a whole constitutes the answer to this question … There is not a single aspect of the Christian message that is not in part an answer to the question of evil.” (CCC 309)
Here are four parts of the Christian message that help me when the problem of evil tests my faith. First, God will make right what evil has harmed (Revelations 21:1-5). Second, God brings forth good that He wants and chooses from evil that God did not want or choose (Genesis 50:20). Third, God is with us, sharing our burdens (Hebrews 4:14-16). Fourth, God chose me specifically (1 Timothy 1:15-16).
Can you see how Jesus’s crucifixion connects to all these truths? For me, it is especially the fourth reason that helps me understand why God chose the way of the cross to save us, not some other.
The truth is, I do not make sense to myself. For example, “What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate” (Romans 7:15). I regularly — not always of course, but regularly — make a mess of me and a mess for creation around me. So it would make sense to me if God had not made me and if God instead had made someone else to fill my slot in creation, someone like me but better, an “Aaron-Paul-Nord-upgraded-version” with better social skills and self-control, who would make fewer messes. Yet the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were not content to make someone sort of like me, or simply to fill my slot in creation. They chose me, specifically, and made me, specifically, because they loved me, specifically.
In summary, I often don’t understand myself, and sometimes what I understand, I don’t like. Yet God loves me, specifically, right now as I am, and He works for my good, and wants to see me alive and blessed. The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit want me with them. So why did they choose the way of the cross, Jesus’ sacrifice, to save me?
Because I am not the ideal version of myself that I want others to see. I am not the ideal version of myself that I fancy it would make sense for God to love. I am the strange, beloved creature I am, and the Holy Trinity sees that it would help me, save me, if Jesus chose the strange path He did. So He gave his life for me, and he invites me to offer his sacrifice with him, for “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). That does make sense to me, and I hope it makes sense to you, too. For you, specifically you, matter to God, and He loves you, and Jesus chose the cross to save you.