“The evil men do lives after them…”

In today’s first reading, the king is confronted with the hideous consequences of his terrible sin.

He repents, however, and the Lord says that these consequences will fall not on him but on those after him.

This seems unfair – why must the son suffer while the king gets away free?

Part of the answer is that evil actions have two kinds of consequences: they can have evil effects in the physical world and they can affect our relationship with God. The king repents and God heals the relationship, but the evil effects remain. If the king is faithful, his relationship with God will help protect him, but not his son, not unless the son is faithful to the Lord.

We see this all too often. We do bad things: sometimes we are not fully culpable; all the time (hopefully) we repent, yet evil effects may remain.

People make choices in “good conscience,” but if they are objectively wrong, evil of some sort will be a result – no matter how they feel about themselves.

That is one reason why we should be continually diligent in forming our consciences ever more perfectly and in learning ever more precisely from God what is right and wrong.

The king in today’s reading turned out not to be diligent.

By the grace of Christ, we can and must be diligent, in seeking and following the truth ever more closely, in purifying our consciences and our relationship with God, in accepting any suffering we endure as part of his plan for salvation, and in doing what we can to undo the evil that we humans do.