Wrath, what is it? Wrath is a scary word, and when used in relation to God it can be terrifying. In the Old Testament, it is used quite a bit, along with severe punishments towards the people of Israel. I have to be honest and say that apart from the psalms, I do not spend much time in the Old Testament; so much that I don’t understand, it being written from a cultural perspective that I have a hard time understanding. God language can only come through the person or culture where they are in their development, so what comes out as inspired writing has to be looked at in its historical situation. Jesus used the ‘Father’ metaphor to tell us something deeply real about how God relates to us. This relationship can seem to be far from how God and relationship were experienced and wrote about in the Old Testament. So in the story of the ‘Prodigal Son’, where is the wrath of God? How Jesus explains God’s relationship with us is said in images that seem to transcend culture, since Father’s, the good fathers is something understood and longed for, even if never experienced. Let’s back up a bit and think about a mother and a father who truly love their child; not abusive and who do not wish to control their child. They love their child as much as is possible for a human to love, possibly the closest thing to ‘unconditional love’ we can come to in this sphere. So the daughter or son comes in and admits to the parents that he has fallen into a serious addiction, she is addicted to heroin. How will the parents react? Well with ‘wrath’, deep all-encompassing wrath. What are they reacting to? Is it a rejection of their daughter or son? Well of course not. The wrath is directed towards the addiction, something in their child that is a threat, something that could consume their beautiful lovable child. In fact, an entity that could turn their child into something else. As time goes on, if the child refuses to change, or to even seek help to try to change, after a while the parents with great sorrow will have to let their child go. If the addiction continues the child could become its actual addiction, what was truly human is now swallowed in a form of death. Sadness is there, but the wrath towards the addiction will never go away. People often think of wrath, and sad to say rightly so, as something that is out of control, rage-filled and destructive. Abusive people can be wrathful, hateful towards the person because the man or woman won’t be what they want them to be…..it is a will-to-power issue. God is not into power, He is into love. Did not Jesus wash the feet of the disciples? That event says a lot, we need to ponder that more. For he is a revelation of the Father love, towards all of us without exception; though we try mightily to exclude people, even other Christians who do not agree with us. Often we fall prey to making God in our image and likeness. So in the parable of the ‘Prodigal Son’, where is God’s wrath? Well, it is in the love of the Father’s response, the son has to choose how to react to that. If he rejects it and wants only to live there as a servant, he will feel the Father’ embrace as something other than love, it could be smothering to the young man if he rejected the embrace…even painful. We have great dignity and only the good Lord knows the depths of our hearts and what our final free choice will be. It is on us, God’s love is free. Like any true love, it is not forced. If our free will were taken from us, we would cease to exist because all of our memories of choice would be erased. The fear of the Lord is to fear to loose what is most dear, what we are made for, and that is love, union and the dance for eternity in the internal life of the Trinity. Hell is an eternal dance with ourselves and the love of God experienced as wrath because what was once human is now no more.
God is not into power, He is into love. Did not Jesus wash the feet of the disciples? That event says a lot, we need to ponder that more. For he is a revelation of the Father love, towards all of us without exception... and... Often we fall prey to making God in our image and likeness. A insightful meditation, Mark, focusing on the love, mercy, and tenderness of God. In the freedom God gives us to love, there is also freedom to reject. In the parable of the Prodigal, there is included the elder, loyal son. He initially refuses to join the celebration because of his resentment. He was caught up in a distorted sense of justice, a tit for a tat. And so, the Father reaches out in love to him, also. We are left, however, not knowing if he chose, in the end, to enter the feast or not. He had been faithful to his responsibilities, but did he really know the Father? Also, we know that Jesus washed Judas' feet, too, but in the end Judas chose to leave the celebration. Similarly, in the parable of the talents, the third servant fails to invest his talent primarily out of a distorted view of his Master: Matt 25: 24 He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, `Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not winnow; 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. He had made his Master into his own image and likeness. And so he is cast out, not because the Master was a hard man, but because in the "wickedness" of his fear, he would never be able to share in the joy of his Master. Safe Under Mary's Mantle!
So his choice to continue his separation from his father's forgiveness and loving embrace this is God's wrath. I tend toward seeing this as the sons pride and I don't generally think of wrath in this way. I consider it more along the line of the result of his initial actions. The ones which drove him back to his fathers home in the first place. Thanks Mark, a good story to ponder and a thought provoking take on it as well. Knock and the door shall be opened!
Sin is eternal death! God’s wrath! "Smites" the destruction of sin! Like a mother watching over her children, when she sees her child being attacked by a wild animal, she becomes enraged with a holy anger, and fights back with superhuman strength to protect her child! This is wrath!
Msgr. Charles Pope who has written an excellent piece on God's wrath, say there are plenty of references to it in the New Testament: http://blog.adw.org/2014/10/what-is-the-wrath-of-god-2/ From Msgr. Pope's blogpost: So again, what is God’s wrath? And how can we reconcile it with His love? Consider some of the following images, explanations of God’s wrath. None of them alone explains it, but considered together an overall understanding may emerge. Image: God’s wrath is His passion to set things right. We see this image of God’s wrath right at the beginning in Genesis when God cursed Satan and uttered the protoevangelium (the first good news): I will make you and the woman enemies … one of her seed will crush your head while you strike at his heel” (Genesis 3:15). God is clearly angered at what sin has done to Adam and Eve and He continues to have anger whenever He beholds sin and injustice. He has a passion for our holiness. He wants what is best for us. He is angered by what hinders us in this regard. Surely all sins provoke His wrath, but there are five sins that especially cry out to Heaven: willful murder (Gen. 4:10), the sin of the Sodomites (Gen. 18:20; 19:13), the cry of the people oppressed (Ex. 3:7-10); the cry of the foreigner, the widow, and the orphan (Ex. 20:20-22), and injustice to the wage earner. (Deut. 24:14-5; Jas. 5:4) (cfCatechism of the Catholic Church # 1867). In terms of sin, injustice, and anything that afflicts or hinders the possibility of salvation, God has a wrathful indignation and a passion to set things right. This is part of His love for us. His wrath may be manifested through punishments, disturbances of our conscience, or simply by allowing us to experience the consequences of our sin and injustice. Clarification: God’s wrath is not like our anger. In saying that God is angry we ought to be careful to understand that however God experiences anger (or any passion), it is not tainted by sin. God is not angry the way we are angry. When we get angry we often experience an out-of-control quality; our temper flares and we often say and do things that are excessive if not sinful. It cannot pertain to God to have temper tantrums and to fly off the handle, to combine anger with an unreasonable lashing out. The way God does experience anger is not something we can fully understand but it is surely a sovereign and serene act of His will, not an out-of-control emotion. Clarification: God is not moody. It does not pertain to God to have good days and bad days, good moods and bad ones. Scripture seems clear enough when it indicates that God does not change. Consider this from the Book of James 1:17 Every good and perfect gift comes from above, from the Father of lights, in whom there is no variableness or shadow of turning. Hence to speak of God’s wrath does not mean that He has suddenly had enough or that His temper has flared, or that His mood has soured. God IS. He does not change. As the text says, He is not variable. And this leads us to the next image. Image: Given what we have said, the primary location of God’s wrath is not in God; it is in us. Perhaps the best definition I have heard of God’s wrath is this:God’s wrath is our experience of the total incompatibility of our sinful state before the Holiness of God. Sin and God’s holiness just don’t mix. They can’t keep company. Think of fire and water. They do not mix. They cannot coexist in the same spot. Bring them together and you can hear the conflict. Think of water spilled on a hot stove and hear the sizzling and popping; see the steam rising as the water flees away. If, on the other hand, there is a lot of water, the fire is overwhelmed and extinguished. But the point is that they cannot coexist. They will conflict and one will win. This is wrath: the complete incompatibility of two things. It is this way between sin and God’s utter holiness. We must be purified before we can enter the presence of God otherwise we could never tolerate His glory. We would wail and grind our teeth and turn away in horror. The wrath is the conflict between our sin and God’s holiness. God cannot and will not change so we must be changed. Otherwise we experience wrath. But notice the experience is in us primarily and not God. God does not change; He is holy, serene; He is love. If we experience His wrath it is on account of us, not Him. Consider the next image. Image: It is we who change, not God and this causes wrath to be experienced or not. Consider the following example. On the ceiling of my bedroom is a light with a 100-watt light bulb. At night before bed I delight in the light. I am accustomed to it. But then at bed time I put out the light and go to sleep. When I awake it is still dark (at least in the winter). Hence I put the light on. But Ugh! Grrr! Now the light is bright and I curse it! Now, mind you, the light has not changed one bit. It is still the same 100-watt bulb it was hours earlier. The light is the same; it is I who have changed. But do you know what I do? I blame the light and say, “That light is harsh!” But the light is not harsh; it is just the same as when I was happy with it. Now that I have changed I experience its wrath but the wrath is really in me. So also consider the experience of the ancient family of man with God. Adam and Eve walked with God in the cool of the evening when the dew collected on the grass (cf Gen 3:8). They had a warm friendship with Him and did not fear His presence. After sinning, they hid. Had God changed? He had not; they had, and they now experienced him very differently. Fast forward to another theophany. God had come to Mt Sinai and as He descended the people were terrified for there were peals of thunder, lightning, clouds, and the loud blast of a trumpet. The people told Moses “You speak to us, but let not God speak, else we will die!” (Ex 20:19) God, too, warned Moses that the people could not get close lest His wrath be vented upon them (Ex 19:20-25). Now again, had God changed? No, he had not. He was the same God who walked with them in the cool of the evening in a most intimate way. It was we who had changed. We had lost the holiness without which no one can see the Lord (Heb 12:14). The same God, unchanged though He was, now seemed to us frightening and wrathful. What then shall we do? If we can allow the image of fire to remain before us we may well find a hopeful sign in God’s providence. Since God is a holy fire, a consuming fire (cf Heb 12:26; Is 33:14), how can we possibly come into His presence? How can we avoid the wrath that would destroy us? Well, what is the only thing that survives in the presence of fire? Fire is the only thing that survives! So it looks as if we’d better become fire if we want to see God. And thus it was that God sent tongues of fire upon the Apostles and upon us at our Confirmation. God wants to set you and me on fire with the Holy Spirit and in holiness. God wants to bring us up to the temperature of glory so that we can stand in His presence: See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the LORD Almighty. But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the LORD, as in days gone by, as in former years (Mal 3:1-4). And indeed Jesus has now come: For you have turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath (1 Thess 1:10-11). So there is a “wrath of God.” As I have tried to show, it is more in us than it is in God.But I will not say to you that there is NO wrath IN God. Scripture seems clear to indicate that wrath does pertain to God’s inner life. What exactly it is and how God experiences it is mysterious to us. We can say to some extent what it is not (as we did above) but we cannot really say what it is exactly. But far more rich is the meditation that the wrath of God is essentially in us. It is OUR experience of the incompatibility of sin before God. We must be washed clean in the Blood of the Lamb and purified. Most of us will need purification in Purgatory, too. But if we let the Lord work His saving work we are saved from the wrath, for we are made holy and set on fire with God’s love. And fire never fears the presence of fire. God is love, but He will not change. So it is that love must change us.
Good post, Dolours I know Msgr Pope From long ago when he was a young priest at Mt Calvary Catholic Church in Forestville MD He is a solid priest
Of course, it is based on truth, both parties agree, for when we are before God, only truth can be said. Peace Mark
Language and its meaning change. Today, wrath for many is the oppsoiteof what the Scriptures mean. It can be a hard knot to untangle for many. Those who seek will find, for the seeker will always rejoice at the truth. Peace mark
Don, I'm sorry- could you explain to whom each of those three his's refer. I'm a little slow. Thanks! Safe Under Mary's Mantle!
I hope I can! All three were in reference to the prodigal son in the story. If I am understanding what Mark said correctly, I may have been reading too much into it. I have thought about it a bit over the last few days and I still don't know that I could describe God's wrath in this way. However, regardless of this it is a good lesson and one worth considering because if the returning son does not accept the forgiveness of his father it would be his own pride which was keeping him from being reunited to him fully. The father has forgiven, and remembers it no more but the son must seek and most of all accept it.
