Expert: Marco - 9/3/2005

Question
I am a convert to the Church and I am having trouble with my kids' skeptical questions.  They are 9 and 12 and both gifted, questioning kids. Problem is we live in such a small parish there is no organized Sunday school class and i am supposed to teach them out of the books. You as a physicist would have some clout with them.  First question I can't answer:  Their catechism books emphasize the "father" aspect of God.  Neither kid can understand how God can be a loving father but sent his own son to death.  This makes no sense to them.  Help. thanks  

Answer
Dear Marcia,

your children question is a very important question,and the answer may be difficult for them.
Let me beggin with a premise:
God loves us infinitely and He desires to lead each of us to the eternal life. But God is perfectly Holy and Good; God cannot tolerate evil because evil is uncompatible with His good and holy nature.
So, we cannot go to heaven as long as we are not completely purified from our sins and sanctified.
Our sanctifcation is necessary for us to go to heaven.
God desires to sanctify us, but He has given us a free-will, so God needs our consent in order to purify and sanctify us. God respects our choices and therefore God cannot santify those who do not want to be sanctified and purified, those who do not want to stop sinning, those who do not want to live a holy life.
These are those who go to hell.

Why did Jesus have to suffer on the Cross?

I think this is the most impostant question!

I believe that each of us needed know that God was willing to accept such a terrible suffering for us, in order to really trust God. Every man needed that proof of love, and God, who knew this, has accepted to give him what man consciously or unconsciously asked to Him. Jesus had to suffer and die that way to convince us about God's goodness and God's love towards us. It is man's obstinate distrust against God that has forced God to give man that proof of love, the proof he needed to trust God. By His death on the cross, Jesus destroys our distrust and our doubts, and He gives us the strength to believe in Him and trust Him. This means that each of us is personally responsible of Jesus ' sufferings and death. This distrust, this lack of faith in God is just the essence of the original sin. Christ's Passion has reconciled us to God because it has uprooted from our heart, our distrust and doubts about God; it has satisfied our (conscious or unconscious) desire and need of a proof of love, so that it has given us the strength to trust God and feel loved by Him. I can summarize my thoughts as follows: Salvation implies a deep change of ourselves. God has the power to change us but He wants to do that with our consent. Man cannot really accept to be changed by God and he cannot be in comunion with God as long as even a shadow of doubt and distrust remains in his heart ( it must be stressed that such a distrust may exist even without the man is aware of it, at the unconscious level). God had to destroy every shadow of doubt and distrust in our heart and He has chosen to give us the greatest proof of love that may exist: Christ's Passion.

You must undertsand that God the Father loves His Son Jesus infinitely, much more than every human father can love his children; so God the Father suffered very much together with His Son, as well as the Holy Mother Mary suffered during Christ's Passion.
God the Father knew that such an atrocious suffering was necessary to save many persons, and so He sent His Son to die out of love for all of us; of course He knew that His Son would have been resurrected on the third day and that His sufferings and death would have led many ersons to eternal life.


I hope this may help you.
If you should need some clarifications, please ask again.

Your brother in Christ,

Marco