Devotion for today: Lazarus rises to increase our faith

Scripture for meditation: John 11:3-6, 14-15, 39-43, 53
The sisters sent word to Jesus to inform him, “Lord, the one you love is sick.” Upon hearing this, Jesus said: “This sickness is not to end in death; rather is for God’s glory, that through it the Son of God may be glorified.” Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus very much. Yet, after hearing that Lazarus was sick, he stayed on where he was for two days more. Finally Jesus said plainly: “Lazarus is dead. For your sakes I am glad I was not there, that you may come to believe.” “Take away the stone,” Jesus directed. Martha, the dead man’s sister, said to him, “Lord, it has been four days now; surely there will be a stench!” Jesus replied, “Did I not assure you that if you believed you would see the glory of God displayed?” They then took away the stone and Jesus looked upward and said: “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I know that you always hear me. But I have said this for the sake of the crowd, that they may believe that you sent me.” Having said this, he called loudly, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, bound hand and foot with linen strips, his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus told them, “Untie him, and let him go free.” From that day onward there was a plan afoot to kill him.

St. Peter Chrysologus tells us: On his return from the underworld, Lazarus comes forth from the tomb like death confronting its conqueror, an image of the resurrection to come. Before we can fathom the depths of meaning behind this miracle, we must consider the way in which our Lord raised Lazarus to life. This action appears to us as the greatest of all his signs; we see in it the supreme example of divine power, the most marvelous of all his wonderful works. Our Lord had raised up the daughter of Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, but although he restored life to the dead girl, he left the law of death still in force. He also raised the widow’s only son. He halted the bier, forestalled the young man’s burial, arrested the onset of physical decay, but the life he restored had not completely fallen into the power of death. The case of Lazarus was unique. His death and resurrection to life had nothing in common with the other two. Death had already exerted its full power over him, so that in him the sign of the resurrection shone out in all its fullness. I think it is possible to say that if Lazarus had remained only three days in the tomb it would have deprived our Lord’s resurrection of its full significance, since Christ proved himself Lord by returning to life after three days, whereas Lazarus, as his servant, had to lie in the grave for four days before he was recalled. However, let us see if we can verify this suggestion by reading the gospel text further.

His sisters sent a message to Jesus saying, Lord the friend whom you love is sick. By these words they appeal to his affection, they lay claim to his friendship; they call on his love, urging their familiar relationship with him to persuade him to relieve their distress. But for Christ it was more important to conquer death that to cure disease. He showed his love for his friend not by healing him but by calling him back from the grave. Instead of a remedy for his illness, he offered him the glory of rising from the dead.
We are next told that when Jesus heard that Lazarus was sick, he remained where he was for two days. You see how he gives full scope to death. He grants free reign to the grave, he allows corruption to set in. He prohibits neither putrefaction nor stench from taking their normal course. He allows the realm of darkness to seize his friend, drag him down to the underworld, and take possession of him. He acts like this so that human hope may perish entirely and human despair reach its lowest depths. The deed he is about to accomplish may then clearly be seen to be the work of God, not of man.
He waited for Lazarus to die, staying in the same place until he could tell his disciples that he was dead; then he announced his intention of going to him. Lazarus is dead, he said, and I am glad.  Was this a sign of his love for this friend? Not so. Christ was glad because their sorrow over the death of Lazarus was soon to be changed into joy at his restoration to life. I am glad for you sake, he said. Why for their sake? Because the death and raising of Lazarus were a perfect prefiguration of the death and resurrection of the Lord himself. What the Lord was soon to achieve in himself had already been achieved in his servant. This explains why he said to them: I am glad for your sake not to have been there, because now you will believe. It was necessary that Lazarus should die, so that the faith of the disciples might also rise with him from the dead. (Sermon 63: PL 52, 375-377)

My thoughts: God always has a plan. He never allows anything to happen to us, or continue in us, without a purpose. We must believe this. Sometimes it seems as though God is never going to relieve our suffering, erase our problems or grant us our hearts’ desires. Yet we learn from the story of Lazarus that every aspect of his death was part of a plan to increase the faith of those who witnessed the miracle. We must remember that our earthly happiness is not God’s main goal for our lives: it is our eternal happiness,and that of those around us, that matters most to Him. If we are willing to be His suffering servants, and let Him take His time in granting our requests, if at all, then we are willing to let Him use us so that the faith of those around us “might also rise.” We never know the entire story of our own lives. That is why we must trust in God, who does. 

Devotion for today: redemptive suffering – futility transformed into fruitfulness

Scripture for meditation: Job 6:1-4
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.

Devotion for today: “suffering in Christ: our greatest joy and dignity”

As we remain on the Cross with Christ this week, we find that there is a joy in suffering…

Scripture for meditation:  Matthew 26: 39

He advanced a little and fell prostrate in prayer. “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. Still, let it be as you would have it, not as I.”

Scripture for reflection: Genesis 3:15
“I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel.”

As we discover in Dr. Brook Herbert’s discussion of redemptive suffering: Suffering in and of itself is not joyful. Indeed, extreme suffering undermines the very notion of joy. Alone, suffering is Satan’s personal attack against the “very good” of God’s creation. In Genesis we read of the promised Savior whose heel Satan will bruise but who will himself crush Satan’s head (see above). In this simple statement our Lord is seen as the ultimate victor over the cosmic mayhem initiated by Satan in the world. Yet it is precisely the overturning of evil intent that is effected by the Cross. Outside of union with Christ, Satan’s barrage of hatred against God’s creation is meant to destroy all that is good and holy. The human person enters into this war precisely in the realms of personal suffering. It is here that God invites us to know that in our own experience he has overcome such evil. Satan may continue to bruise the “heel,” but Christ continues to crush his head. So, in this battle, where is the joy? The answer is not in the eventfulness of afflictions, but in the grace of offering such afflictions to Christ and in union with Christ on his Cross. As St. Augustine knew, it is the cause, not the wound, that makes the martyr (causa non poena fecit martyrum)! This speaks of that greater joy inherent in sacrificial love, the gift whereby suffering serves a greater purpose, and God’s own desire to serve and to save the lost. In sharing some of these thoughts with a friend, the response was simply, “But it is so hard!” If we consider the contours of such a gift offered on our part, we see that the difficulty ensues only when we fail to see that our gift is a response to God’s greater and prior gift of “participation.” Such an offering does not consist in ignoring the suffering to which we are subject. Suffering is absolutely real and powerfully overwhelms each aspect of our conscious thought as we go through it. To unite this suffering to Christ’s is then to take seriously the state in which we find ourselves. Our Lord was entirely aware of his sufferings both in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the Cross: “If it be possible…My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Homiletic and Pastoral Review, April 2011, Ignatius Press)

Prayer: The Book of Passion

O my Jesus, my only hope, thank You for the book which You have opened before my soul’s eyes. That book is Your Passion which You underwent for love of me. It is from this book that I have learned how to love God and souls. In this book there are found for us inexhaustible treasures. O Jesus how few souls understand You in Your martyrdom of love! Oh, how great is the fire of purest love which burns in Your Most Sacred Heart! Happy the soul that has come to understand the love of the Heart of Jesus! (Diary of St. Faustina, 304)

My thoughts: To find joy in suffering is a new thought for me. I want pain, humiliation and sadness to disappear quickly. I think most of us do. I want to protect myself from these sufferings, and that is not a bad thing, until it interferes with God’s greater plan for my life. I will take a cortisone shot to relieve the pain in my shoulder, and that is fine, but I will also stay home and not participate in a peaceful demonstration against abortion, to avoid humiliation. Is that fine as well? I doubt it. St. Augustine says that it is the cause, not the wound that makes the martyr. By being willing to suffer anything at any cost to bring God’s redemptive love from the Cross to mankind is truly joyful. It is running the good race, crossing the finish line and feeling the joy in the pain.

Our prayer to God: Today, let us meditate on this words Christ revealed to St. Faustina:

My daughter, meditate frequently on the sufferings which I have undergone for your sake, and then nothing of which you suffer for me will seem great to you. You please Me most when you meditate on My Sorrowful Passion. Join your little sufferings to My Sorrowful Passion, so that they may have infinite value before My Majesty. (Diary of St. Faustina, 1512)