Amen!

…we do humbly pray, in the name of the Father, Son & Holy Spirit. AMEN!

Hi Andrea,I am sorry that you are feeling this way… But God does have a plan! God created us with free will, so that we could choose to accept his love. Evil is a result of free will, since people can choose to not do what’s good. However, God can work good out of evil. Please see these related sections below, from The Catechism of the Catholic Church…Also, I would recommend looking through the Psalms, and finding one or two that really resonates with you, and meditating on them, reading them when you’re feeling down. Try to commit part, or all of it, to memory, if possible. So that if your mind is distressed, you can turn to it. Maybe Psalm 23, or Psalm 37….The Catechism of the Catholic Church:Providence and the scandal of evil:309 If God the Father almighty, the Creator of the ordered and good world, cares for all his creatures, why does evil exist? To this question, as pressing as it is unavoidable and as painful as it is mysterious, no quick answer will suffice. Only Christian faith as a whole constitutes the answer to this question: the goodness of creation, the drama of sin and the patient love of God who comes to meet man by his covenants, the redemptive Incarnation of his Son, his gift of the Spirit, his gathering of the Church, the power of the sacraments and his call to a blessed life to which free creatures are invited to consent in advance, but from which, by a terrible mystery, they can also turn away in advance. There is not a single aspect of the Christian message that is not in part an answer to the question of evil.310 But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it? With infinite power God could always create something better.[174](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P19.HTM#$B2) But with infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world “in a state of journeying” towards its ultimate perfection. In God’s plan this process of becoming involves the appearance of certain beings and the disappearance of others, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, both constructive and destructive forces of nature. With physical good there exists also physical evil as long as creation has not reached perfection.[175](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P19.HTM#$B3)311 Angels and men, as intelligent and free creatures, have to journey toward their ultimate destinies by their free choice and preferential love. They can therefore go astray. Indeed, they have sinned. Thus has moral evil, incommensurably more harmful than physical evil, entered the world. God is in no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of moral evil.[176](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P19.HTM#$B4) He permits it, however, because he respects the freedom of his creatures and, mysteriously, knows how to derive good from it:For almighty God. . ., because he is supremely good, would never allow any evil whatsoever to exist in his works if he were not so all-powerful and good as to cause good to emerge from evil itself.[177](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P19.HTM#$B5)312 In time we can discover that God in his almighty providence can bring a good from the consequences of an evil, even a moral evil, caused by his creatures: “It was not you”, said Joseph to his brothers, “who sent me here, but God. . . You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive.”[178](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P19.HTM#$B6) From the greatest moral evil ever committed – the rejection and murder of God’s only Son, caused by the sins of all men – God, by his grace that “abounded all the more”,[179](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P19.HTM#$B7) brought the greatest of goods: the glorification of Christ and our redemption. But for all that, evil never becomes a good.313 “We know that in everything God works for good for those who love him.”[180](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P19.HTM#$B8) The constant witness of the saints confirms this truth:St. Catherine of Siena said to “those who are scandalized and rebel against what happens to them”: “Everything comes from love, all is ordained for the salvation of man, God does nothing without this goal in mind.”[181](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P19.HTM#$B9) St. Thomas More, shortly before his martyrdom, consoled his daughter: “Nothing can come but that that God wills. and I make me very sure that whatsoever that be, seem it never so bad in sight, it shall indeed be the best.”[182](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P19.HTM#$BA) Dame Julian of Norwich: “Here I was taught by the grace of God that I should steadfastly keep me in the faith… and that at the same time I should take my stand on and earnestly believe in what our Lord shewed in this time – that ‘all manner (of) thing shall be well.'”[183](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P19.HTM#$BB)314 We firmly believe that God is master of the world and of its history. But the ways of his providence are often unknown to us. Only at the end, when our partial knowledge ceases, when we see God “face to face”,[184](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P19.HTM#$BC) will we fully know the ways by which – even through the dramas of evil and sin – God has guided his creation to that definitive sabbath rest[185](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P19.HTM#$BD) for which he created heaven and earth.A hard battle. . .407 – 412407 The doctrine of original sin, closely connected with that of redemption by Christ, provides lucid discernment of man’s situation and activity in the world. By our first parents’ sin, the devil has acquired a certain domination over man, even though man remains free. Original sin entails “captivity under the power of him who thenceforth had the power of death, that is, the devil”.[298](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1C.HTM#$EI) Ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social action[299](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1C.HTM#$EJ) and morals.408 The consequences of original sin and of all men’s personal sins put the world as a whole in the sinful condition aptly described in St. John’s expression, “the sin of the world”.[300](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1C.HTM#$EK) This expression can also refer to the negative influence exerted on people by communal situations and social structures that are the fruit of men’s sins.[301](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1C.HTM#$EL)409 This dramatic situation of “the whole world [which] is in the power of the evil one”[302](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1C.HTM#$EM) makes man’s life a battle:The whole of man’s history has been the story of dour combat with the powers of evil, stretching, so our Lord tells us, from the very dawn of history until the last day. Finding himself in the midst of the battlefield man has to struggle to do what is right, and it is at great cost to himself, and aided by God’s grace, that he succeeds in achieving his own inner integrity.[303](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1C.HTM#$EN)385 God is infinitely good and all his works are good. Yet no one can escape the experience of suffering or the evils in nature which seem to be linked to the limitations proper to creatures: and above all to the question of moral evil. Where does evil come from? “I sought whence evil comes and there was no solution”, said St. Augustine,[257](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1C.HTM#$DD) and his own painful quest would only be resolved by his conversion to the living God. For “the mystery of lawlessness” is clarified only in the light of the “mystery of our religion”.[258](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1C.HTM#$DE) The revelation of divine love in Christ manifested at the same time the extent of evil and the superabundance of grace.[259](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1C.HTM#$DF) We must therefore approach the question of the origin of evil by fixing the eyes of our faith on him who alone is its conqueror.[260](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1C.HTM#$DG)395 The power of Satan is, nonetheless, not infinite. He is only a creature, powerful from the fact that he is pure spirit, but still a creature. He cannot prevent the building up of God’s reign. Although Satan may act in the world out of hatred for God and his kingdom in Christ Jesus, and although his action may cause grave injuries – of a spiritual nature and, indirectly, even of a physical nature – to each man and to society, the action is permitted by divine providence which with strength and gentleness guides human and cosmic history. It is a great mystery that providence should permit diabolical activity, but “we know that in everything God works for good with those who love him.”[275](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1C.HTM#$DV)IV. “YOU DID NOT ABANDON HIM TO THE POWER OF DEATH”410 After his fall, man was not abandoned by God. On the contrary, God calls him and in a mysterious way heralds the coming victory over evil and his restoration from his fall.[304](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1C.HTM#$EO) This passage in Genesis is called the Protoevangelium (“first gospel”): the first announcement of the Messiah and Redeemer, of a battle between the serpent and the Woman, and of the final victory of a descendant of hers.411 The Christian tradition sees in this passage an announcement of the “New Adam” who, because he “became obedient unto death, even death on a cross”, makes amends superabundantly for the disobedience, of Adam.[305](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1C.HTM#$EP)Furthermore many Fathers and Doctors of the Church have seen the woman announced in the “Proto-evangelium” as Mary, the mother of Christ, the “new Eve”. Mary benefited first of all and uniquely from Christ’s victory over sin: she was preserved from all stain of original sin and by a special grace of God committed no sin of any kind during her whole earthly life.[306](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1C.HTM#$EQ)412 But why did God not prevent the first man from sinning? St. Leo the Great responds, “Christ’s inexpressible grace gave us blessings better than those the demon’s envy had taken away.”[307](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1C.HTM#$ER) and St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, “There is nothing to prevent human nature’s being raised up to something greater, even after sin; God permits evil in order to draw forth some greater good. Thus St. Paul says, ‘Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more’; and the Exsultet sings, ‘O happy fault,. . . which gained for us so great a Redeemer!'”[308](https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1C.HTM#$ES)(and secondarily 413 – 421)2847 says: “… God does not want to impose the good, but wants free beings….”2848 says:'”Lead us not into temptation” implies a decision of the heart’I will pray for peace for your mind and heart… And be sure to remember!Romans 8 : 28 “All things work together for good for those who love God.” Romans 8 : 31 “What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who is against us?”Romans 8 : 37-39 “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”John 14 : 27 “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”Praying for you!God Bless,