I
may have said this in a homily before, but I’ll say it again – there is only
one thing common to the experience of every, single, human being that’s has
ever lived.
It’s
not birth – for Genesis teaches that Adam and Eve were created by the hand of
God.
It’s
not sin – for Jesus and His Blessed Mother were born free of sin.
It’s
the experience of suffering. Of
pain. Anguish. Loss.
Every one of us suffers.
But
why? One of the hardest questions asked
of faith is “how can a good God allow those He loves to suffer?” The atheist says a good God would never
permit suffering, hence suffering proves there can be no God.
But
we who believe in God also believe that a good God brings good from our
suffering. He allows us to suffer. He permits us to suffer. But why?
A
few reasons come to mind –
First
of all, to awaken us to reality. Much of
our suffering comes from our sin. Sin,
even if we are deceived into thinking it will be good or make us happy,
inevitably leads to our misery. Look to
the prodigal son, whose misery brought him to repent and return to his father.
Even sickness can awaken us to our reality.
The catechism teaches us “Illness can lead
to anguish, self-absorption, sometimes even despair and revolt against God.
[But] it can also make a person more mature, helping him discern in his life
what is not essential so that he can turn toward that which is. Very often
illness provokes a search for God and a return to him.” St. John Paul wrote “Suffering must serve for
conversion, that is, for the rebuilding of goodness in the subject,
who can recognize the divine mercy in this call to repentance.
Another
reason our loving God permits our suffering is to test us. The entire book of Job is about God
“inflicting” on a good man, Job, all sorts of calamities just to see if Job
will remain faithful to the end, to settle a bet of sorts with the devil. As I mentioned last week, Mother Teresa
suffered the loss of any feeling of friendship with God for more than thirty
years, felt nothing but darkness and emptiness, yet she remained faithful.
God
also allows us to suffer to teach us humility, trust, to discipline us.
Discipline, after all, comes from the same root as “disciple” - to form us, if
you will, into His true disciples, into the men and women He created us to be. There is a beautiful statue of the pieta at
the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at Notre Dame – it’s worth the trip there just
to see this statue – instead of the Blessed Mother holding the lifeless Jesus,
it’s a man, surely His heavenly father, the same father as the prodigal’s
father in another sculpture by the same artist in the same church, who is
lovingly holding His beloved Son.
Now
as I stare at this exquisite artwork, I imagine that at one time it was a giant
block of marble, but to get to the magnificent finished work, it took the
master Ivan Mestrovic countless hours of carefully removing tiny bits of rock
to arrive at the image within. So it is
with us – God uses our sufferings, I think, to chip away at all that surrounds
us that is not Him, all that keeps us from being exactly who He made us to be,
all that is not in Christ.
And
finally, God allows our suffering to give us an opportunity to love
God, to give God glory, and to participate in His work of redemption. “Offer it up” is something I heard my mother
say countless times in my youth, to pretty much everything that befell me and
my siblings. Even broken bones and
cracked teeth.
The atheist, you see, finds no
value in suffering, so sees it as something to be avoided at all cost. But we who believe are called to endure, even
rejoice in, suffering. Properly
understood, we even see it as a gift.
St. Paul wrote “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake.” And He writes to the Philippians in the
passage I just read that we share in Christ’s sufferings in order attain to His
resurrection, in order that we may be taken possession of by Christ Jesus.
Indeed, our suffering gives us
the opportunity to unite our sufferings with the suffering Sacred Heart of
Jesus, who endured mockery, rejection, spittle, brutal flogging, the shame of
crucifixion and the most painful death imaginable, all out of love for you and
me. Our suffering gives us the
opportunity of enduring our own trials, anguish, and pain out of love for Him,
and to share in His suffering for the sake of the redemption of mankind.
Sisters and brothers, true
Christian faith is a faith of suffering.
It is not a faith that preaches security, comfort, wealth and earthly
happiness like you might see a televangelist preach. It is the faith centered on
the cross of Christ, a symbol of suffering and death to be sure, but also a
symbol of Christ’s victory over suffering and death.
And in our own agonies, let us
take comfort in the love of Jesus, represented here in His most compassionate
Sacred Heart. Know in our darkest times
that He doesn’t inflict our suffering on us, but that He will use our suffering
for His purposes. And know that He knows
our pain, has experienced our pain, shares our pain, and is there, suffering with us.
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