Then Job answered and said: Ah, could my anguish but be measured and my calamity laid with it in the scales, they would now outweigh the sands of the sea! Because of this I speak without restraint. For the arrows of the Almighty pierce me, and my spirit drinks in their poison; the terrors of God are arrayed against me.
Christ declares: Matthew
16:25-27
Jesus then said to his disciples; “If a man wishes to
come after me, he must deny his very self, take up his cross, and begin to
follow in my footsteps. Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever
loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would a man show if he
were to gain the whole world and destroy himself in the process? What can a man
offer in exchange for his very self? The Son of Man will come with his Father’s
glory accompanied by his angels, according to his conduct.
We conclude our study
of Dr. Brook Herbert’s article on redemptive suffering: Jesus enters into
suffering with a full knowledge of the extent of the horror that will be
imposed upon him in the end to overcome its effects for our benefit. For
ourselves, suffering is not often entered into freely; rather, it represents a
devastating “tradition” inherent in a fallen world. Christ’s sufferings are
compelled by love and endured for love. Our sufferings are compelled by
fallenness and endured by our human hopelessness to change them. Thus, if we allow
ourselves to be united to Jesus through holy reception of the sacraments,
through prayer and study and through loving our neighbors, futility can be
transformed into meaning and fruitfulness, as we share in the redemptive
purposes of Christ himself. Such is the mystery of grace. We offer nothing but
our weakness and receive the dignity of Christ’ redemption. Difficulty in
making such an offering also devolves from the fundamental error that to do so
will, in some way, lead us out of the circumstances of our sufferings. Yet the offering
is never intended to achieve a known end but rather the end that God desires
for it. Our only contribution is to “offer” ourselves freely to Christ for his
purposes; this contribution, too, is conditioned and compelled by love and only
made possible through love. If and when God brings us out of our sufferings, we
rejoice and must rejoice, but this deliverance should not be the intended
purpose of our offering. A conscious awareness of joy may or may not “come in
the morning,” but this gratuitous reversal of fortune is not the motivation of
our gift. Suffering is the unmitigated tragedy that ensues from living in a
fallen world. It will enter into each of our lives at some point. But equally
true is the knowledge that God himself allows such sufferings to come to us. It
is this truth that ultimately makes suffering bearable and fruitful for us and for
the world that Jesus came to save. God allows suffering to exist in his world,
but with fatherly care he never allows us to suffer beyond what is possible to
bear. A mature trust in the character of our loving Father allows us to live
through suffering with serenity and patience and courage, all in likeness to
Christ himself. Such union may not eliminate the pain of suffering, but it does
accomplish something even greater. Union with the crucified (and risen!) Christ
finally allows us to see how we have never suffered alone, and how none of our
lives’ afflictions have ever been without eternal meaning. (Homiletic and Pastoral Review, April 2011, Ignatius
Press)
Prayer: Who
will grant me, Lord, to find You only, and open all my heart to You, and You as
my heart’s desire, so that no man may deceive me, not any creature move me or
draw me back, but that You alone speak to me, and I to you, as a lover is wont
to speak to his beloved, and a friend to his beloved friend. This is what I
pray for, this is what I desire, that I be joined wholly to You, and that I may
withdraw my heart from all created things, and that through Holy Communion and
the frequent saying of Mass, I may savor and taste eternal things. O Lord God,
when shall I be made one with You and wholly melted into Your love, so that I
may wholly forget myself? Be in me, and may I be in You, and grant that we may
always so abide, always together in one. (St.
Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ)
My thoughts: It
is important to understand that redemptive suffering has no end result in mind.
Dr. Herbert reminds us that while we are on the Cross in our suffering, we
cannot be uniting it to Christ’s if our real goal is the cessation of the pain.
We may or may not be healed, may or may not find a job, may or may not stop
petty gossip about us. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we see a higher
purpose for our suffering, and do not wish for it to be relieved until all the
good that can come from it has been achieved. If God guides us to the right
doctors, or lawyers, or HR personnel, and our problem is solved, wonderful!
But, in some situations, we may never be free from the pain, yet with the help
of the sacraments, prayer and loving acts of kindness and mercy to our fellow
man, we can ease our own burden by drawing closer to Christ. In our own happy
world, we never really have the time to unite ourselves to Christ the way we
can through our own suffering world. Let us take the prayer of St. Thomas a
Kempis to heart: This is what I pray for, this is what I desire, that I be joined
wholly to You, and that I may withdraw my heart from all created things….
Our prayer to God: As we end our week of contemplating the merits of redemptive suffering, let us thank God for the opportunities He has given to us to share in His supreme act of love and mercy. As pain and sadness enter our lives, from now on, let us be willing to climb back on the Cross, and be a gateway of blessings for a world so in need of God’s mercy.
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