Today’s readings give examples of three kinds of evil. The gospel relates how Pilate maliciously mixed the blood of men, whom he evidently had murdered, with the blood of their sacrifices. This is moral evil in which we participate every time we opt for the goods of creation over the Supreme Good which is God. When we view something risqué from the Internet, we share in moral evil.
Structural evil is bound up in laws, institutions, and customs. The Supreme Court’s banning of anti-abortion laws is a structural evil. And so is Pharaoh’s mistreatment of Hebrew workers in the first reading. Finally, natural evil results from disease, earthquakes, and foul weather. The falling of the tower killing eighteen people in the gospel was likely occasioned by some fault in nature. It represents a natural evil.
The Church has traditionally taught that sin is at the root of all evil. Whether our sins cause evil directly or indirectly, in the end, there is no one to blame for the resultant evil but ourselves. In today’s gospel, Jesus exhorts us to repent of our sins. Even though we may now suffer the effects of others’ sinning, we will not ultimately perish because of our own sins, as we listen to Jesus’ exhortation during this season of Lent and rely even more on God who, in the words of the psalmist, "is kind and merciful."