Is This All There Is?

I look around the world today and I see all the suffering and injustice and oppression and violence, and I have to ask, “Is there all there is?”

 
How is it that a celebrity or an athlete or a corporate executive can make tens of millions of dollars every year while tens of millions of people are living in poverty and struggling to obtain adequate food or shelter or health care or even clean water?  How is it that there are obscenely wealthy people jetting around the world between their palatial mansions while there are exponentially more people working two or even three jobs just to pay the rent or the mortgage and their grocery bills?

 
Right now there are people of all ages, in the midst of great suffering, suffering from cancer and mental illnesses, and all kinds of diseases.  There are children suffering whose medical conditions defy the best medical and scientific minds in the world. There are older persons who are losing more and more of their lifetimes of memories each day as Alzheimers or dementia claim more of their minds.  

 
There are people living on the streets, abandoned and overlooked by the world, begging just to survive one more day.    

 
There is so much in this world that is disturbing and horrifying.  The Nazis murdered six million Jews in the Holocaust and several million other people as well.  Two years ago, Hamas kidnapped, raped and murdered hundreds of innocent people in their own homes and at an outdoor music festival.  Stalin is responsible for the deaths of upwards of 40 million people or more. In Africa, Christians are being kidnapped and killed by Muslim extremists.   Abortionists kill a million babies every year in the United States.

 
There is evil in the world but the world is not evil.  God created the world and made it good.  “God looked at everything He had made, and found it very good” (Genesis 1:31).  He made humans in His image and likeness.  He created humans good but humans followed the deceptions of the Devil and sinned and embraced evil.  Nevertheless, because humans were created good and in the image and likeness of God, they remain good, though some are more good than others.  

 
In the early centuries of the Church, Gnostics believed that the physical world was evil.  They were wrong then.  They are still wrong today. 

 
God did not create the world perfect but He is guiding the world that He created towards perfection and that perfection is where God awaits us. He is perfection and He is drawing us towards Him…if only we left Him.   See Paragraph 310 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church which is based on the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas.

 
The Catechism of the Catholic Church declares:  “Because creation comes forth from God’s goodness - “And God saw that it was good…very good” — for God willed creation as a gift addressed to man, an inheritance destined for and entrusted to him (299).”

 
There is much good in the world.  There are many good people.  There are many good people in the world because the world is good and God plays an active role in what He created and He guides us with His Holy Spirit.   

 
I am certain that there is more to life than just this.  St. Paul tells us in his First Letter to the Corinthians (2:9-10), 

But as it is written:  “What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard,

and what has not entered the human heart,

what God has prepared for those who love him,” 

this God has revealed to us through the Spirit.

I am certain that there is more to life than just this.  There is a better place and there are much worse places.  There is a place – hell – than is indescribably more horrifying than anything in this life.  There is a place – purgatory – which is far worse than anything in this life but this place purifies as a preparation for Heaven.  There is a place – Heaven – where God reigns far better than the human mind can comprehend in this life.  

 
During the Last Supper, Jesus told his Apostles and through them, he tells us:  

 
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me.  In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be.”  (John 14:1-3)

 
In the Book of Revelation, we are given a glimpse of what is to come: 

 
”Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The former heaven and the former earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.  I also saw the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.   I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, God’s dwelling is with the human race. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will always be with them [as their God].  He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, [for] the old order has passed away.”  (Revelation 21:1-4)

 
Is this all there is?  No, this life is not all that there is.  There is another life, a life unimaginable to human intellect, a life with God in Heaven.  

 
May God lead you with His Spirit to that far better place earned for us by the salvific life, death and resurrection of His Only Son.