When evil seems to triumph, what can I do?

Often enough, people ask, father, when evil seems to triumph in my life, what can I do?

Those who know their own poverty and sinfulness know all too well that the world is fraught with evils and that their own efforts at dealing with it are quite futile and miserable indeed. In the face of such evil and personal helplessness, options seem quite limited and so often we choose to sin. But this choice only leads to greater poverty, futility and misery…evil seems to triumph.

Biblical figure, Job, puts it succinctly “Man’s life on earth is a temptation.” This experience brings us to our knees, and in the doors of the Church at the beginning of every Holy Mass we hear the faithful praying amidst their misery… “Miserere Nobis” (Lord Have Mercy).

To answer the question clearly, there is much we can powerfully do to deal with the evil that seems to triumph in life: to frequently and ardently ask Jesus for His mercy.

God has unlimited mercy available for each and every one of us. In fact, St. Faustina (who is his Secretary of Divine Mercy in Heaven) tells us in no uncertain terms that the amount of mercy that God has for us is so immense it can be compared to all the waters of the oceans! How vast and wide and incomprehensible are the waters of the sea? (About 352,000,000,000,000,000,000 [quintillion] gallons give or take a couple billion.)

If we could fathom that, perhaps we could begin to glimpse how much mercy God wishes to pour out upon us. And, yet there are so few who ask Him for it. It is like a hidden treasure. Jesus talks about this in the Gospel…the Kingdom of God is like a man who finds a treasure in a field and goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. What the man sold were his possessions and his life of sin. The treasure that he found in the field that caused him to act so radically is nothing less than the superabundant mercy of God.

The mercy of God can be seen most perfectly in the Most Holy Eucharist and in the sacrament of reconciliation. In particular, it can be seen in the precious blood of Jesus which was shed for our salvation by the whips that tore His sacred and innocent flesh at the scourging, by the crown of thorns which adorned and ravaged His head in mockery, in the wounds endured by the nails which pierced His sacred hands and feet on the cross, and, particularly and most especially, in the glorious wound He endured when the soldier pierced His side by thrusting his spear to ensure Jesus was dead on the cross.

In these places particularly we can see the mercy of Almighty God pulsating and gushing forth in order to wash away our sins and the sins of the whole world. This precious blood is the mercy of God and it is truly present in the Most Holy Eucharist, The Host, that we receive from the priest during the Holy Mass. It is also exactly this precious blood of Our Savior that washes us clean of our wicked deeds and heals us in the sacrament of reconciliation (by His wounds we are healed).


But we hesitate to believe, to practice all of this. We easily become distracted by the allurements in life, and we begin to doubt. The wounds our sins have incurred and the experience of our poverty and weakness bring us distress. Here, in our doubts, the Risen Christ appears to us as He did to St. Thomas the Apostle and invites us into His wounds. Did you ever think what St. Thomas must have felt when Jesus, risen from the dead, pressed his hand into His wounded side?

And so, when evil seems to triumph in life, we need to turn ardently to our Lord for mercy: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner!” Or better yet, let our Blessed Mother, Mother of Mercy, beg it from Jesus for us when we pray: “…Turn then most gracious advocate, your eyes of mercy toward us and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus! O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary!”