Some years ago, Father Albert J. Hebert, S.M. explained, "The chastisement actually involves a complexity of severe trials and tribulations for the human race: natural disasters of all types like floods and tidal waves, storms, quakes, eruptions, economic disasters, famines, plagues, diseases which will include incurable ones*, revolutionary activities, indiscriminate terrorist bombings, civil, racial and religious strife; wars, persecutions...Many of these sufferings will be either from nature or from one's own fellowman. The demons will urge them on in this mutual self-destruction and there will be much destruction by the demons themselves. A sort of poetic justice and retribution! Man, along with Satan, makes his own hell, even on earth."
* See here.
There are all too many today, and sadly even within the Church, who believe it's only a
"confused theology" which advances the idea that God sends punishments (or chastisements). God, such proud people insist, "doesn't work that way."
How then do such misguided people explain the Flood which destroyed the known world in Noah's time? How do they explain the five cities of the plain - Sodom and Gomorrah - which were wiped out because of the grave sins [primarily homosexual acts] which were being committed there? It was the holy angels who told Lot, "We are about to destroy this place, for the outcry reaching the Lord against those in the city is so great that he has sent us to destroy it." (Genesis 19: 13).
Only a foolish man would attempt to "correct" God's Holy Word. And that Holy Word is most clear, for those who haven't lost their supernatural faith while succumbing to a radical secularism. We read: "I will punish them for their sin" (Exodus 32: 34); "he does not leave the guilty unpunished" (Exodus 34: 7); "I will punish you for your sins seven times over" (Leviticus 26: 18); "I will choose their punishments" (Isaiah 66: 4); "on the wicked he will rain coals and sulphur" (Psalm 11: 6); "I will punish their sin with the rod" (Psalm 89: 32); "the wicked will not go unpunished" (Proverbs 11: 21); "God knows how to keep the unrighteous under punishment" (2 Peter 2: 9); "the Lord will punish the powers in heaven and the kings on earth" (Isaiah 24: 21); "the Lord is coming to punish the people of the earth for their sins" (Isaiah 26: 21); "the Lord will punish men for all such sins" (1 Thessalonians 4: 6).
God doesn't send punishments? The Scriptures tells us otherwise.
For more on Chastisement, see here.
