Expert: Marco - 6/22/2005

Question
Hello Marco,

This august will be 2yrs since I was raped as a freshman in college.
I have been since going to a school close to home but this fall I will be tranfsering to a school not so close to home.
I've been trying and trying to be ok with what happened. This includes therapy but I realized what I really need is peace.

I have a question. Why do you think G-D would allow me to have been raped? What did I do so wrongly in my life that would warrent it? And how/what can I do move on?

Thank you,
Rachel

Answer
Dear Rachel,

I am deeply sorry for what happened to you.
I think that your question "why did God allow me to have been raped?" is a very important question.
Of course I cannot know the answer, but I am sure that there is a good reason why God allowed this to happen.
Everything is under God's control, and nothing can occur if God does not allow it to occur.
Terrible events occur in the world every day; the presence of sin in the world is the cause of these events.
We all are involved in sin and we are then somehow responsible of these terrible events.
Every day, we all must try to do better, to improve our spiritual life, to love God more, to love our neighbour more, etc.
With the help if the Holy Spirit, we must try to purify ourselves and abandon every egoistic, impure or foolish desire and thoughts.

God loves us infinitely and He desires to lead each of us to the eternal life  and to the true happiness. 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.The fear of eternal damnation and the other penalties threatening the sinner can initiate an interior process which, under the prompting of grace, will yield a true and deep love for God.
God knows that suffering  is sometimes the only means to induce us to a full repentance and a true conversion.

So don't be afraid; God loves you infinitely. Even when He apparently abandoned you, He loved you. The Lord has shown His loves for us in many ways, above all on the Cross.

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.

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

Your brother in Christ,

Marco