Just miles from Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis — the site of a deadly school shooting during the summer of 2025 — a bishop this week led the local Catholic community in a reflection on how to heal and to bring grief before God.
In a presentation on Jan. 13 at St. John the Baptist Church in New Brighton, Minnesota, Bishop Andrew Cozzens of Crookston, Minnesota, encouraged the community to pour out their pain to God in faith.
Bookended by Mass and adoration, the presentation, “A Wounded Church: Finding Peace and Healing,” was streamed online.
During the talk, Cozzens discussed how to reconcile faith in God with horror that takes place in a Catholic church, such as the Aug. 27 shooting, which claimed the lives of two children and injured many others.
He noted that God “doesn’t will evil” but that he brings good out of it “always.”
“We were not made for death; we were made instead for eternal life,” he said. “But this is also why trite answers won’t help us when it comes to facing the problem of evil.”
“Jesus was wounded by evil,” Cozzens continued. “We know that, but we also know that Jesus allowed his wounds to become a place of grace, or of life.”
“It’s one of the great mysteries of our faith that Jesus still has his wounds when he rises from the dead,” he pointed out.
Cozzens, who served as an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis from 2013 to 2021, shared some of his personal struggles with faith that he dealt with as the local Church confronted years of sexual abuse by Catholic leaders.
The bishop talked about the importance of bringing struggles to God in prayer.
In that place of pouring out his struggles, Cozzens has found that “that’s the place where God has to speak.”
“The real thing that’s bothering me — that’s the only place his word can meet me,” Cozzens said.
“It’s actually after pouring out my feelings that then I can receive the truth of what God wants to say to me,” he said. “Because now I’ve opened up the wound and that place is ready, and I see it, and he can speak to it.”
In response to the problem of evil, Cozzens said: “There’s not a simple answer, but there is an answer.”
“God’s answer to evil is the cross,” he said.
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