Question 8.136

8.136 Why do we sometimes have the feeling that God has fallen asleep?

To answer your question, I would like to quote first the words of Benedict XVI during his last Wednesday audience on February 27, 2013: “Eight years [after accepting the Petrine ministry] I can say that the Lord has truly led me, he has been close to me, I have been able to perceive his presence daily. It has been a portion of the Church’s journey which has had its moments of joy and light, but also moments which were not easy; I have felt like Saint Peter with the Apostles in the boat on the Sea of Galilee: the Lord has given us so many days of sun and of light winds, days when the catch was abundant; there were also moments when the waters were rough and the winds against us, as throughout the Church’s history, and the Lord seemed to be sleeping. But I have always known that the Lord is in that boat, and I have always known that the barque of the Church is not mine but his. Nor does the Lord let it sink; it is he who guides it, surely also through those whom he has chosen, because he so wished. This has been, and is, a certainty which nothing can shake. For this reason my heart today overflows with gratitude to God, for he has never let his Church, or me personally, lack his consolation, his light, his love.”

We often ask this question about the absence of God when we look at the massive presence of evil in our world. When I traveled to the worst disaster sites on earth, to the Philippines after the typhoon or to Jordan in the camps for refugees from the war in Syria, it was not unthinkable to wonder where the Lord really was. If I consider the persecuted, hunted-down Christians who were driven from their homes, forced into exile with no belongings at all, abandoned and humiliated everywhere in the world, I know that despair is quite understandable. As in the Old Testament, we would like God to strike and destroy our enemies. Why does he not answer in such tragic moments?

And yet, day and night the anguished cries of our voices reach his ears: “For your sake we are slain all the day long, and accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord? Awake! Do not cast us off for ever!

Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?. . . Rise up, come to our help! Deliver us for the sake of your merciful love” (Ps 44:22-24, 26).

The words of Christ on the Cross echo our doubts precisely. At that time he asked his Father: “Lord, why have you abandoned me?” But Jesus’ cry is an act of unfailing confidence, to tell God that he relies on him alone. This is not a cry of rebellion, but a filial lament. Today too, when we are lost, like the witnesses of the crucifixion, our doubt is still a hope. If we call out to God, it is because we have confidence. Christian doubt is not a moment of despair but another declaration of love.

God is not asleep; he is present despite our searching, which is sometimes too exclusively rational. We are like weeping children who do not understand that our Father remains at our sides forever.