I wish to thank all of you for your generosity in assisting those people suffering from the recent hurricanes in Louisiana. Through you generosity over $100,000 has been sent to assist parishioners and others needing assistance and I am sure that through your prayers even greater aid has been sent; God alone knows how much.

In the aftermath of the hurricanes some may ask why God would allow such evil to happen, even to those who, striving to serve Him, ask daily to "deliver us from evil".

In the world evils are of two kinds, physical and moral. Among physical evils we number such things as sickness, sorrow, hunger, thirst, bodily suffering, death, persecution, famine, floods etc. Moral evil is sin, and is in fact the only real evil. Physical evils may be real blessings, instead of misfortunes, because they serve as means to detach our hearts from the world, of avoiding or atoning for sin, of exercising the virtues or gaining merit for heaven. Thus when we ask to be delivered from evil we are asking both to be unconditionally delivered from sin and to be conditionally freed from physical evils, if such is God’s good pleasure and if such will not interfere with our salvation or with His designs. We also implicitly ask that He send us such physical evils as are for our spiritual welfare and thus for eternal salvation. The physical evils God sends directly or indirectly for our spiritual welfare are usually called crosses, or trials or simply "our cross". To carry our cross means to bear these physical evils with patience and cheerfulness.

In fact these crosses are necessary for us all. "Whoever doth not carry his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple" (Luke 14. 27). St. Alphonsus says: "The earth, being a place of merit, is consequently a place of suffering." "Far from gaining anything by refusing a cross we only make it heavier." It is a mistake to think that one might reach heaven without difficulty, without crosses. If we cannot gain anything in the world without much effort, without even much suffering, how can we expect to be able to secure the endless joys and bliss of heaven, to gain which no labor, no suffering, no sacrifice can be too great!

We cannot be saved unless we willingly carry the cross, which God has specially chosen and designed for us. Thus crosses well born are a means of sanctification. If we do not bear them with patience, resignation and cheerfulness they will render us only the more guilty and deserving of punishment. St. Alphonsus says: "To carry our cross meritoriously we must carry it cheerfully etc." "He who suffers patiently suffers less and saves his soul, whilst he who suffers impatiently, suffers more and may even lose his soul." St. Teresa says: "Learn to suffer something for the love of our Lord, otherwise there is no great merit in serving Him." And St. Vincent de Paul tells us: "We ought to regard it as a great misfortune, not only for individuals, but also for families and whole religious communities and orders, to have everything prosper according to their wishes, to spend their time quietly and to have nothing to suffer for the love of God. Yea, hold it for certain, that everyone, every religious order that has nothing to suffer, but enjoys the approbation of every body, is well-nigh unto a downfall." Storms are necessary to keep large bodies of water from becoming stagnant and thus corrupt. Likewise spiritual storms, crosses and trials, keep us from spiritual stagnation, from corruption. God sends them to those He loves, either to enable them to become good and pleasing to Him, or, if already so, to make them still more holy and pleasing. The angel Raphael explains the necessity of crosses to Tobias: "Because thou wast acceptable unto God, it was necessary that temptation should try thee." Wherefore we should be grateful for the crosses God sends to us, and lovingly embrace them as marks of His special favor and as means to sanctification.

How then do crosses sanctify us? They do so by first of all removing imperfections from our spiritual work by making us act more purely for God, and less for self-gratification. When devotion is sweet and pleasant there is always a danger of seeking ourselves in our devotions. But when the will must act amidst pain and sorrow then the heart lifts itself to God for His sake. This is especially true when our crosses are involuntary. Not that it is wrong to seek consolation; but we must seek it in God and not elsewhere; we must seek it by clinging to our cross, not by struggling against it.

Secondly, crosses also sanctify us by means of expiation. It is not enough to suffer; we have to accept them and unite them with Christ. Suffering merely endured has no merit; there must also be the act of the heart.

Suffering also sanctifies us by the power of mortification. The efficacy of mortification arises from its setting up in the soul a habit of self-restraint, which is one of our most valuable weapons in the spiritual life, when such self-restraint rests on supernatural motives. Suffering, lovingly accepted, is essentially an exercise of the will, restraining the lower nature from pusillanimity and complaint, and turning it to God. This is that blessed violence of which our Lord speaks —not a stoical hardness, but a humble striving and refraining following the example of Jesus. St. Bernard says: "What can be hard to bear, when you gather up the bitterness of your Savior."

The saints have often spoken of the value of suffering. St John Chrysostom said: "If our divine Savior were to bestow on thee the power of raising the dead to life, He would confer on thee far less than when He affords thee the occasion to suffer; for by the gift of miracles He would make thee a debtor to Himself, whereas when He sendeth thee suffering, He becomes thy debtor. Moreover, although tribulations had no other advantage than to enable thee to endure something for the love of thy God, who hath loved thee so much, this in itself would be already a great recompense and an ample reward." St. Paul says: "The sufferings of this life bear no comparison with the glory that is in store for us" (Rom. 8. 18).

In all the physical evils that we must suffer in this life let us, like the saints, look to the Crucifix. Its sight can impart the necessary patience and resignation in all our crosses, to bear them cheerfully and gratefully as chances to atone for our many sins, of testifying our love for God and gaining merit for heaven. As St. Paul says to the Corinthians (2 Cor.): "That which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation, worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory."

As we approach the month of November, let us continue our generosity by also offering up our sufferings for the poor souls in purgatory. By doing this we can obtain for them relief from the fires of purgatory and gain their entrance into the eternal happiness of heaven.