Rabbi Harold S. Kushner in his book - "When Bad Things Happen To Good People" - asks a question, which most of us have asked ourselves at some time or another, and that is: "Why do bad things happen to good people?" The bombing of the federal building in Okalahoma City last year was recently back in the news, as venue for the trial is trying to be determined. I know we all still vividly remember the incident. We all remember how the media was full of stories and pictures of the many innocent people and children who were injured or killed in the bombing. For many people, when they think of the bombing, the picture that instantly comes to mind was the heart-wrenching one of the fireman carrying the limp, dead body of a little girl in his arms. I am absolutely sure that many people, as they listened to the stories and looked at those terrible pictures of the bombing aftermath, asked themselves over and over again -- why? Why did that happen, especially to those poor innocent children? Why did God let such a terrible thing happen? This is a question which, whether we want to admit it or not, is one of those questions which is central most to our being. It is a cause for reflection to one degree or another to all of us, depending upon our own particular life’s circumstances.

The misfortunes of good people are not only a problem for the people who suffer them, and to their families, but they are also a problem for all of us who want to believe in a just and fair and livable world. When we see these misfortunes being suffered by good people and innocent children, they eventually raise the questions in our minds about the goodness, the kindness, and yes, even the very existence of God.

People do not even have to be unusually good or saintly people to make us confront this problem. Few of us even know many such people. But often times we find ourselves asking why everyday, ordinary people, our loved ones, our friends and neighbors, who are neither extraordinarily good, nor extraordinarily bad, should somehow suddenly have to face the agony of pain and tragedy. If the world were fair, these people would not seem to deserve what they sometimes get. These people are neither very much better nor very much worse than most people we know; so why should their lives, at times, be so much harder? When we ask ourselves, "why do the righteous suffer?" or "why do bad things happen to good people?" we are trying to understand why ordinary people -- ourselves and people around us -- should have to bear extraordinary burdens of grief and pain.

The day is December 21, 1984. The day had been cold, rainy and icy. I had been ordained as a Deacon now for just over two years and was assigned to St. Mary’s parish in New Bedford. That evening my wife, Jackie, and I were at a Deacon Christmas party at the Diocesan Family Life Center in Dartmouth. About 10 p.m., my wife very suddenly and very urgently said to me, "I feel uneasy, we have to leave." I was not happy about having to leave the party so early, but I knew Jackie was concerned about our oldest child, Kim, who was driving home from work in the icy conditions outside. Kim was just sixteen and a half, and had just gotten her license.

We were about a quarter of a mile from home, when at a distance; we could see a car off the road, up against a huge boulder. A police car was just arriving on the scene as we came up to the car. All of a sudden Jackie was shouting, "stop the car, it’s Kim." Before I could even come to a complete stop, she was out of the car and at Kim’s car, even before the police.

As I got to the car, I could see Kim unconscious inside. The driver’s door was all crushed in, and the car was totaled. The policeman was holding Jackie back, while she was shouting: "but I’m her mother."

After they finally extricated Kim from the car, she was first taken to Union Hospital in the north-end of New Bedford; and after determining they could do nothing, she was then sent to St. Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford. It was here that I first met Father Eddy Correia. He was the hospital chaplain at the time. By now it was after midnight and he had to get out of bed to come over to St. Luke’s after receiving the telephone call. I vividly remember his calming presence there that night. Not so much in anything he said, but rather, in his compassionate and caring presence. Later on, he gave Kim the Last Rites as her condition worsened as she lay in the Intensive Care Unit in a comma. After a few hours, it was decided to send Kim to the New England Medical Center in Boston.

At the New England Medical Center they explained that when Kim’s car hit the boulder, her head first hit the driver-side window and then was violently thrown the other way. This caused her brain to be battered about inside her skull, causing severe bruising of the brain. The prognosis they gave us was not very good at all. If she survived, they said, and if she was fortunate enough to come out of the comma, at best, she would almost certainly have a very much diminished mental capacity. And then, they said, she would have to spend at least a couple of years in a rehabilitation hospital. That was what Jackie and I were faced with in the early morning hours of December 22, 1984, just three days before Christmas.

As we took turns sitting with Kim lying in that hospital bed in a comma, many different thoughts and questions raced through my mind. Forget my four years of spiritual and theological formation as a Deacon. All of that seemed to be non-existent. I sat there as an absolutely distraught parent looking at his first born child lying in a comma, not knowing whether she would live or die. And if she lived, wondering whether or not she would once again be that straight A student she had always been, or would she end up being severely handicapped, mentally. As I wondered all these thoughts, I kept thinking, "why Lord. Why did this happen to Kim? What have we done to deserve this? It’s not fair. We’ve tried to be good Christians and to do what you want of us. I’m even a Deacon ministering to your people, so why are we being punished like this?" The bottom line was I felt as though, somehow, I was the cause for this happening. I, also, was very angry at God for allowing it to happen.

I was faced with a very real calamity in my life, and in spite of all my training and background, I found I was without answers, and was seriously questioning God for allowing this to happen. What I experienced and my response to this personal tragedy in my own life is very common, and is how many people respond to real tragedy and pain in their lives.

One of the ways in which people have tried to make sense of the world’s suffering has been by assuming that we deserve what we get, that somehow our misfortunes come as punishment for our sins.

In the book of the Prophet Isaiah 3:10-11 we read: "Tell the righteous it shall be well with them, for they shall eat the fruit of their deeds. Woe to the wicked, it shall be ill with him, for what his hands have done shall be done to him."

It is tempting at one level to believe that bad things do happen to people (especially other people) because God is a righteous judge who gives them exactly what they deserve. By believing this, it gives us the best possible reason for being good and avoiding sin. It also gives us an image of God as all-loving, all-powerful and totally in control of every facet of human existence. Couple all that with the reality of human nature, and the fact that none of us is perfect, and can without much difficulty, think of things we have done that were sinful, we can always find grounds for justifying what happens to us. But how really comforting and how religiously adequate, is such an answer?

The idea that God gives people what they deserve, that our own misdeeds cause our misfortune, is a simple and attractive solution to the problem of evil at several levels, but it has several serious limitations. For one, it teaches people to blame themselves. It creates guilt even where there is no basis for guilt. Second, it makes people hate God, even as they hate themselves. And thirdly, and the worst thing of all is, that it is totally without any merit.

In the Gospel of Luke 13:1-9 we read: "At that time some were present who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices." He said in reply: "Do you think that these Galileans were the worst sinners in Galilee just because they suffered this? By no means!... Or take those eighteen who were killed by a falling tower in Siloam. Do you think they were more guilty than anyone else who lived in Jerusalem? Certainly not!"

If he were preaching here, Jesus might well point to some typical headlines today -- a plane load of German tourists crashes in the Caribbean just after take-off -- a federal building in Oklahoma City is blown to pieces by a terrorist bomb. Mass murders and random catastrophes of nature like those Jesus pointed to are occurring constantly in every age. Jesus is telling his listeners and us that the victims of such misfortunes were certainly not guilty of some horrendous sin and thus incurred God’s wrath. Their offenses, he says, were no worse than anyone else’s. Tragedy in all its various forms, from illness to death, is no more than a part of the evil, which is in the world as a consequence of original sin. God created mankind with a free will. Because of the choice made by Adam and Eve, both good and evil are a part of this world. God does not will that anyone should die or suffer in any way. To the contrary, God himself weeps when any of us suffer, because we are all his children.

In the Gospel of John 12:35 we hear that when Jesus is told of the death of his good friend, Lazarus, he begins to weep. The bottom line is that bad things just happen; there is no rhyme or reason for their occurrence, they are just a part of life. They occur not because God willed it so, or as part of some form of punishment by God, but only because of random chance, and because life is not always fair.

In my instance, life was not fair with respect to Kim’s accident, but God was truly good to us in many different ways during our personal tragedy.

I believe it was sometime during the day of either December 22nd or the 23rd, that Deacon Bob Pelland appeared at New England Medical to be with us in our time of extreme need. Bob stayed there with us, listening to our woes, being sympathetic and compassionate to us, praying with us and for us, generously giving of himself to us in whatever way we needed. And there he stayed, day and night, sleeping on a couch in the lobby, until December 26th or 27th. He stayed there to be with us in our time of dire need, even through Christmas, and even though he had a wife and children at home, because he had the love and compassion of Christ within him. It is that love that God calls each of us to have for one another. Even in that time of great personal pain and sorrow, God was indeed so very good, because he allowed me the opportunity to experience the love of Jesus Christ in the personhood of Bob Pelland. Through that experience my own spirituality deepened and grew.

While we were keeping watch in the hospital we found out that hundreds and even thousands of people in parishes around the Diocese were praying for us. Scripture says, (Luke 11:9) "And I say to you, ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you." Those who do not really know or don’t really believe in the power of prayer, take note, for God indeed is very, very good. On December 25, Christmas Day, the feast of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, Kim started to come out of her comma. In about a week and a half later, much to the sheer amazement of her team of doctors and hospital staff, Kim left the hospital. She didn’t leave New England Medical to go to a rehabilitation hospital for two years, as her neurologist had originally predicted, but rather, went home with us. One of the doctors on the medical team which took care of Kim, after she had begun her recuperation, referred to her as the "miraculous recovery," and he was right on the money.

God was indeed good to us regarding Kim’s accident, even though life had been very unfair. But I suppose some could say it’s easy to have that attitude when things end up on a happy note. There is probably some truth to that statement. I know that personally, I did not really work through all the questions and doubts I had when Kim was lying in a comma. Much of that just faded into the background as a result of Kim’s miraculous recovery. But life’s unfairness was not done with us yet.

It’s June 1987, approximately two and a half years after Kim’s accident. I receive an urgent telephone call. Jeffrey, my second oldest child, has been in an automobile accident and is at St. Luke’s Hospital in Middleboro. As it turned out, considering that his car had been absolutely totaled in a front-end collision with a stone wall and tree, it was lucky that Jeffrey was alive. However, he broke his jaw and it had to be wired shut for a number of weeks. The worst part, however, was he had severed some tendons in his right hand and the surgeon’s prognosis was that he would probably lose a significant amount of the usage of his hand. Jeffrey was right handed and his plans were to go to New England Technical School to become a finished carpenter.

When I saw Jeffrey in the hospital and I heard the prognosis about his hand, many of the same questions crept back into my mind and soul. Again I questioned God and blamed him for what had happened. Why was this happening, I asked? Didn’t we suffer enough with Kim’s accident? Again, my reaction to this tragedy was purely emotional. And, who else was there to blame, but God.

Life is truly not fair, but God is indeed very good. As chance would have it, one of the best surgeons in the Boston area in this particular field, just happened to be in the hospital when Jeffrey was brought in. It was this surgeon who operated on Jeffrey’s hand.

After many, many weeks of recuperation and rehabilitation therapy and very much to the amazement of the surgeon, approximately 98% usage of Jeffrey’s right hand was restored.

Once again life’s tragic unfairness ended on a less than tragic note. But life’s unfairness was still not done with us yet.

It’s Saturday, September 2, 1989 at 3 a.m. on Labor Day weekend. We are awakened from our sleep by the Freetown Chief of Police and Father Ed Correia. And then the words that every parent fears the most comes from the quivering lips of the Police Chief, "I’m so sorry to have to tell you this Mr. St. Onge, but your son was in an automobile accident, and was killed." The words screamed in my ears and tore through my heart and mind like a runway locomotive. No it couldn’t be; it can’t be my mind keeps saying as I start sobbing uncontrollably. I keep praying desperately inside, please God, no, don’t let it be so. But in the end it’s true. Our nineteen year old son, Jeffrey, had fallen asleep at the wheel of his car and hit a telephone pole just a couple of hundred yards away from where Kim had her accident, and was killed instantly.

Once again life had been terribly unfair, right to the n^th degree, and this time there was no happy ending. There was only tremendous emptiness, loss and grief, and the feeling that my whole world had suddenly ended.

Only a parent who has lost a child, especially a young child, can know the terrible pain and grief of such a loss. What makes it so terrible is that it goes against the normal and natural order of things; children are supposed to live longer than their parents.

If ever my faith was to be shaken to the very core of its foundation, it had to have been at this point of my life. All the questions of why, all the doubts and the inner anger at God I had experienced during the prior tragedies of Kim and Jeffrey’s accidents returned. The strangest thing was that initially, I was not totally conscious of just how deep some of these emotions and doubts were. They had been there, but I had kept a lid on them and wouldn’t acknowledge them, especially my anger at God for allowing this to happen. With help, however, I eventually worked through most of these hang-ups pretty quickly, with one exception, my anger at God. It took quite awhile for this one to surface.

It was about four months later at our annual deacon retreat. I don’t even know what eventually caused it to surface. I was sitting all alone in the chapel. Suddenly within the confines of my mind, I was yelling and screaming, and yes, even cursing God. I called God every name in the book and then some. And finally, when I was all done, I felt this tremendous weight lifted from my soul and I heard God say to me, "there, do you feel better now?" I learned something tremendous that day -- it’s OK to be angry at God and even to lash out at him. I had experienced tremendous emotional stress with Jeffrey’s death and had repressed it, because there was nobody to blame but God. It wasn’t God’s fault. God didn’t want Jeffrey to die. But that didn’t matter. In my frail humanness, I needed someone to blame and God was it. But you know something; I found out that God has broad shoulders; and He is big enough to take anything we have to give him. God loves us immensely and is indeed our friend. As our friend, he understands and accepts the emotional trauma we sometimes experience, and our need for a means of releasing it. And so, yes, it was OK for me to blow off steam at God, because God is merciful, God is forgiving and God is unconditional love. Life is extremely unfair, but God is indeed very good.

I started my talk by citing Rabbi Kushner’s book, "When Bad Things Happen To Good People." As I come to a close, I would like to share with you, one of Rabbi Kushner’s summations toward the end of the book. He says, "Life is not fair. The wrong people get sick and the wrong people get robbed and the wrong people get killed in wars and accidents. Some people see life’s unfairness and decide, ‘There is no God; the world is nothing but chaos.’ Others see the same unfairness and ask themselves, ‘Where do I get my sense of what is fair and what is unfair? Where do I get my sense of outrage and indignation, my instinctive response of sympathy when I read in the paper about a total stranger who has been hurt by life? Don’t I get these things from God? Doesn’t He plant in me a little bit of His own divine outrage at injustice and oppression?...Isn’t my feeling of compassion for the afflicted just a reflection of the compassion He feels when He sees the suffering of His people? Our responding to life’s unfairness with sympathy and with righteous indignation, God’s compassion and God’s anger working through us, may be the surest proof of all of God’s reality."

And what is our response to be to life’s unfairness? The Poet Archibald MacLeish probably said it best: "To forgive the world for not being perfect, to forgive God for not making a better world, to reach out to the people around us, and to go on living despite it all. Man depends on God for all things; God depends on man for one. Without man’s love, God does not exist as God, only as creator, and love is the one thing no one, not even God himself, can command. It is a free gift, or it is nothing. And it is most itself, most free, when it is offered in spite of suffering, of injustice, and of death."

Yes, life is indeed very, very unfair, but by the same token, God is very, very good in spite of it all.

I would like to close my talk with the following which tends to sum up what I have been saying. 

"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life.

We are in charge of our attitudes." (Author Unknown)