Facing Evil in our Lives

In today’s first reading, Esther C: 12, 14-16, 23-25, we learn of Esther’s desperate prayer for God’s help. “…[S]eized with mortal anguish, [Esther] had recourse to the Lord. She lay prostrate upon the ground, together with her handmaids, from morning until evening, and said: ‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, blessed are you. Help me, who am alone and have no help but you, for I am taking my life in my hand.’” She was determined to approach the King of Persia. To enter his presence without an invitation could mean death.  She says to the Lord: “Put in my mouth persuasive words in the presence of the lion and turn his heart to hatred for our enemy [the enemy of the Jewish people], so that he and those who are in league with him may parish. Save us from the hand of our enemies; turn our mourning into gladness and our sorrows into wholeness.” 

How apropos are those words for today.  We, too, face an enemy, a hatred, we alone are not able to overcome. We need divine intervention, as did the Israelites as we face Isis, Al-Quaeda, those bent on destroying Christians and Jews and others whose beliefs differ from their own.  We also need God’s help in facing the enemies of truth and justice, right doing and right being, all of which are being attacked by immoral practices, unjust judgments, and misguided actions by those who promote human trafficking, drug trafficking, abortion on demand, sex trafficking, slave labor and consumeristic, materialistic, and narcissistic pursuits at the risk of destroying the poor, the vulnerable, the helpless and immigrant populations in our midst.

With Esther, let us have recourse to God day and night. Let us ask for persuasive words in the presence of “the lions” of hatred and evil that we may courageously stand up to those forces in our society that will destroy our children and grandchildren and bring all of us to ruin spiritually.  And with Jesus on the cross, let us thirst for good in this world to triumph over evil.