Where Vice Meets Virtue

Suffering only has value when we use it as a cue to bring God to others.

By Mark McDermott

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From its outset, 2025 has seemed more committed to testing our resolve than enabling our resolutions. Terrorist attacks marred its first day, and that has been followed by earthquakes in Tibet and fires in Los Angeles. Was it perhaps ironic, or insensitive, that the psalm this week proclaims, “You make the winds your messengers, and flaming fire your ministers”? (Psalm 104).

            It can be hard to see at times, but as Christians, we must have faith that virtue can be extracted from hardship. The passage of time often grants a wisdom to perceive this in ways that seem hidden at the time. Consider the Second World War – a time of trial, hardship, fear, and death incomparable in human history in terms of its breadth and scope. Yet, met by the virtues of comradeship, loyalty, faith, and ingenuity, we can find good things that did come from it. Innovations like synthetic rubber, jet engines and rockets, and primitive computers were devised or made practical by the imperative of the conflict. Organizations like the United Nations and Catholic Relief Services were created to respond to the needs created by the war and its aftermath. And on a personal level, it cannot be denied that the bonds forged between comrades in arms, or fellow factory workers, or any others brought together by the struggle, have been blessings for those who have enjoyed them.

            Whatever the severity of the challenge we face, God remains constant and steadfast. Our freewill is irrevocable, so we can choose how we respond to the world. We do not believe that God is omnipresent – that is, God is not Himself in everything. God is not in the fires that destroy lives and homes, nor in the famines that plague millions with suffering and loss. But God can be there all the more in protection against and restoration from those evils when we make His presence known. It is only if we abandon the world to its vices that struggle loses meaning. Will we respond by going “up on to a high mountain…to cry out…Here is your God” and offering God’s love through ourselves? (Isaiah 40). If there’s anything that Jesus’ life shows, it’s that God asks us to offer ourselves as remedies for the evil in the world, even if it’s not our own doing. That’s where virtue was shown in World War II, or Hurricane Katrina, or the September 11th attacks – people who had no stated responsibility stepped forward to offer whatever they did have.

            Virtue can run contrary to the human instinct of self-preservation against uncertainty and danger. Self-preservation alone is not a bad thing – there’s a reason airplane safety instructions ask us to start our own oxygen before helping others, since we can’t help others when we’ve keeled over ourselves. Even Jesus took time away from his ministry to pray and refocus. But all of that is done with the intention of giving oneself all the more to others. Challenges help us to discern and commit to what is most important – there is no time or energy for waste amidst a crisis. The worst thing we can do is to throw up our hands and turn inward. Instead, crises must renew our resolve to meet each challenge with the virtues that it calls for. If something touches your heart, find some way to make a difference: call or write to someone struggling, shelter or support victims, donate, advocate. I can’t express this better than the Prayer of St. Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console,

to be understood as to understand,

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

A new year’s resolution towards God’s love points to the one thing in our lives that cannot and will not ever change. Go tell that from upon the mountain.