Prigozhin, Putin and the hope of a merciful God

By Effie Caldarola, OSV News

Every news channel showed the crash over and over again until I could see the horrifying image in my sleep. The only problem was, it was so distressing I couldn't sleep.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of Russia's brutal Wagner group, was believed to be on a private jet carrying 10 people when it fell from the sky north of Moscow. It appeared a wing had fallen off.

Analysts studied the crash from every angle. Who was on board? What was the trajectory of the crash? Was it a bomb? Was it, as most believed, the final revenge of Vladimir Putin, whose authority Prigozhin had challenged in an aborted coup two months before?

For me, it brought up questions about that perennial mystery, evil in our world. And where is God in this?

An earlier video of Prigozhin haunts me, because in his extreme vitriol I sensed the presence of evil in his eyes, his voice, his threatening demeanor. Here was a man who led a mercenary force in Third World countries, forces that fought and killed innocents brutally for the money that was in it.

Now, he was probably dead, and my mind pondered the moments following his death.
I have written before about a friend who is in a ministry which serves those who are dying alone. He is with them in their last moments, and although to him, as to me, death is a mystery, he felt a certainty that the dying "fall into the arms of a merciful God."

Into what, I wondered, do men like Prigozhin fall? It's the perennial question, I suppose: Where's Hitler now?

Prigozhin's probable demise happened to coincide with a Scripture reading I'd been praying over, Matthew 20:9. Jesus tells a parable about a man who hires day laborers to work, but as the day moves on, he finds more available and hires them as well, even those who are hired a short time before day's end.

When it's time to present their day's wages, he pays first the men who have worked only a short time. Surprisingly, they are given a full day's pay. Now, if I were in line with the others, I could guess their thoughts: This boss is generous. We who have worked all day are in for a big payday. But instead, all the laborers are paid the same, the promised day's wage.

Rather than see injustice in this, I found consolation. Because I know myself as someone who, even late in the day, is still struggling to know and love God. My spiritual progress is slow and still yielding to new surprises and insights, even as I age. I could see myself as the worker who hasn't always put in the full day. I know I'm a sinner, reliant on the generosity and love of a merciful God.

In Scripture, Jesus presents some harrowing images of Gehenna. And yet, when probed about his comment that it is as hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven as it is for a camel to move through the eye of a needle, he tells his followers that "with God all things are possible" (Mt 1:26).

So, I leave to this God of possibilities to sort out the evil that permeates our world, the Putins and Prigozhins, all the many leaders who resort to almost anything to retain power, wealth and prestige, who seem to have forgotten their God completely. God has not forgotten them.

I focus instead on my own journey, my work in the field that struggles even late into the day, and I trust in a God of compassion and accept a God of mystery.