Please
explain the difference between a miracle where God interferes with free will
and when God just allows something evil to happen because of choice. I keep
thinking about the lady who threw her innocent children into the bay in San
Francisco. Please explain this to me.
 et’s begin to answer your
question with an example that might at first seem completely unrelated to
your actual question.
Imagine an insect climbing up
the trunk of a tree. Eventually it will get to a place where two branches
join, and it will have to choose which branch to follow. As it climbs higher
and higher, it will encounter more and more branches and more and more decisions
about which path to follow. Now, at the end of its climb it could find itself
anywhere in the tree. And whether it ends up on one side of the tree or the
other all depends on the succession of choices it made along the
way.
This is an example about the
ultimate consequence of multiple events. But in all actuality there may not
be any meaningful importance as to where an insect ends up in a tree. So
let’s look at a more complex example.
A better image about a meaningful
consequence can be found in a chess game, in which a player’s intent
is to win the game. A chess grandmaster must literally think out in his
imagination all the consequences of every possible move—for dozens of
moves in advance. Then he will choose to make an actual move that, he trusts,
will produce the most favorable results for his winning the game.
Now, to start to address the
intent of your question, we can think of God as being able to assess the
events of the world an infinite number of “moves” in advance. And,
in all of this, we can trust that God’s intent is, well, something along
the lines of what Christ Himself told us: The gates of the netherworld
shall not prevail (Matthew 16:18).
This means that however God chooses
to intervene in this world, He does it for an infinitely well-calculated
reason. He might work a miracle to produce immediate effects. And yet He
might—to our eyes—do nothing immediate, waiting for future events
to follow. Whatever God chooses to do, He does it for the greatest good of
all things. And, in all of this, God will be nurturing the growth of saints
by pouring down His graces with special liberality on those souls who have
the will to accept and use those graces to do His will.
Therefore, our task in life is
not to become anxious about what is happening around
us and not to get angry at God because we don’t
like what is happening around us. Instead, we must
trust completely in God. We must focus on doing
anything it takes—through sacrifice,
obedience, and prayer—to purify ourselves
so as to become in this world effective instruments of God’s will, so
that, through the ultimate consequences of our
obedience to His will, the gates of the netherworld
shall not prevail.
  
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