Let’s get it out of the way. We don’t know why bad things happen to good people. I suspect we never will, because in heaven we’ll be too busy praising God to concern ourselves with demanding explanations about things that happened in this life.
But still, bad things do happen. It can be difficult to find something wonderful in the diagnosis of a fatal disease or in a sudden death or in the end of a relationship or in endless despair.
The celebrant at today’s 5 a.m. Simbang Gabi Mass, my friend and pastor Tuck Grinnell, addressed the issue head on, referring to both the readings from Malachi about the refiner’s fire and from Luke on the death of Zechariah’s questioning of God. You’ll recall that Zechariah was 
struck mute when he questioned the angel about Elizabeth’s pregnancy. Then, nine months and one week later, when he was asked what the child should be named, he wrote on a tablet, “John is his name,” his tongue was freed, and he began praising God. (The image at right is an ancient fresco depicting that moment.)
Zechariah “needed perhaps to be quiet, for his heart to be ready,” Tuck said. “… Sometimes, life is a test for us. There is nothing in our lives God can’t overcome. Suffering is sometimes terrible to endure, but it can bear fruit.”
I thought of struggles in my own life, so daunting at the time, that bore more fruit than I ever could have imagined. I thought of my Simbang Gabi friends, who have lost so much in terms of friends and family and houses in the past several years due to all the natural disasters in the Philippines. What Tuck said resonated: Suffering can be terrible, really terrible. But if we have faith, we can learn from it… and grow closer to God in the learning.
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