Where is God when our needs are immediate?

Where is God?

Throughout human history man has always inquired; where was God during this tragedy?  Why has he not seen what we are going through?  If only God was here this terrible disaster would not have occurred!  

Martha said to Jesus, after her brother Lazarus died; “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”  (Jn 11: 21).  

Job, the story of what trust is all about and the Lord addressed Job saying; “Who is this that obscures divine plans with words of ignorance?  Gird up your loins now, like a man; I will question you, and you tell me the answers!  Where were you when I founded the earth?  Tell me. If you have understanding.  Who determined its size; do you know?  Who stretched out the measuring line for it?  Into what were its pedestals sunk, and who laid the cornerstone, while the morning stars sang in chorus and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”  (Jb 38: 2 - 7).

In the 20th century, December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and more than 900 sailors and marines are still entombed beneath the USS Arizona.  September 11, 2001, over 3,000 citizens of the United States and other nations died in the attacks on our country.  Where was God when these atrocities occurred?

As Catholics we attend Church where there are at least two confessionals somewhere within the parish where we sit.  In each one of these small enclosures there is one who is waiting to hear our sins.  It isn;t the priest who sits there that secures our secrets; he is there as Christ but the Holy Spirit awaits us and is God when our greatest needs are in a precarious malady.  Where is God when we sin?  A stone throw within reach of solace and forgiveness.

While attending Holy Mass we sit before the burning bush which is God’s angel preparing to see the finality of the Easter Triduum that occurs each time we choose to come forward to his Son Jesus Christ and the Passion he died for you and me.  Be careful when reading this Truth of our salvation.  The priest stands at the altar and as the Holy Spirit is called upon to present to the Father a sacrifice of Jesus Christ becomes an actual event that is not a symbol of Easter; It is the reality that we are present at each Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  

Did you discover that it is the same Holy Spirit we encountered in the confessional prior to this sacrifice.  However, there is another important truth that is present as we are in the Church 

of Christ.   This same Holy Spirit that forgave our sins and through the Transubstantiation on the altar through the hands of the priest is the very same Holy Spirit that entered our souls when we were baptized and then confirmed as evangelizers for Christ.

While we acknowledge the presence of the Holy Spirit in Sacraments, let our attention go a little further to the presence of this Spirit while we sit together at Mass  Jesus told his disciples:  “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am in the midst of them.”  (Mt 18: 19 -20).  As we are collectively together whether in the confessional (penitent and confessor), or as a congregation at Mass or some other gathering, Jesus Christ is there with us.  

Where is God?  He’s in the pocket of sins being forgiven, and in the Sacred Host at Communion, or in a home when families sit and pray together.  

There is one collective truth that exists:  The Absolution is real and assists us in the elimination of what holds us away from God’s Mercy.  The other absolute is when the Holy Spirit brings about the Transubstantiation on the altar at Mass, the real presence of Christ is there and remains in the consecrated hosts.  This becomes the answer to Where's God?  

Understanding the answer to why and where regarding God’s presence in the moment of disaster; will not be answered by any human without an infinite result from God.  When we again ask where is God; Go back to Job:  “Will we have arguing with the Almighty by the critic?  Let him who would correct God give answer!”  Then Job answered the Lord and said: “Behold    

I am of little account; what can I answer you?  (Jb 40: 1 - 4).  

Ralph B. Hathaway