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A Kingdom of Suffering?--by Richard Bedard It is easy to be pious and devout when things are going well in our lives. A new healthy baby is born, we get that promotion or raise at work, or perhaps we just bought a new house after months of searching and trying to obtain a mortgage. But what about when our lives seem to be in complete upheaval? What about those who have chronic illness and suffer in pain everyday? What about those of us who just lost a loved one who suffered terribly for months, perhaps years with a terminal illnes? What of those victims of natural disasters, such as floods, and tornados? You get the idea. In these times of great trial , we often cry out: "Why me Lord?" To me the answer lies in the Cross of Our Lord Jesus. We must never forget for a moment that God loves us so much that He did not spare His only Son for us. Simply put, to follow Jesus is the Way of the Cross.As we grow deeper in our faith , we can only expect things to get worse, until we are hanging on by faith alone. Each of us is called to bear witness to the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus in different ways. Yup, like it or not, Jesus has a cross picked out for us that is neither too heavy nor too light. One that is perfect for us. One that we can carry with His help and graces if only we ask Him for them. In our humanity , we try to make our crosses lighter. We want a cross made of styrofoam that looks like the real thing! The words of St. Francis de Sales echo in my ears, "The everlasting God has in His wisdom foreseen from eternity the cross that He now presents to you as a gift from His inmost Heart. This cross He now sends to you. He has considered with His all-knowing eyes, understood with His Devine mind, tested with His wise justice, warmed with loving arms and weighed with His own hands to see that it be not one inch too large and not one ounce too heavy for you. He has blessed it with His holy Name, anointed it with His grace, perfumed it with His consolation, taken one last glance at you and your courage, and then sent it to you from heaven, a special greeting from God to you, an alm of the all-merciful love of God." Like the Benedictine Monks, we too must remember that "each moment is gift", an opportunity if you will, whether we view it as such or not, whether or not we see how the events of our lives fit into God's plan. In times of trial and tribulation, many fall away from the Church and God, rather than accept Jesus' invitation to draw nearer to Him. We try to experience God on our terms instead of His. But this is nothing less than rejecting the Cross that God has prepared for each one of us. To be Christian is no easy task. Christ Himself sweat drops of blood in the Garden knowing what His Father had in store for Him. But He showed us the 'Way'. Through prayer and graces , He was able to embrace the Cross and lovingly fullfilled the will of God through love and obedience to the Father and for the love of others. We are called to do no less. Through our trials and sufferings our faith is being perfected and our soul being saved, but only if we co-operate with God's plan. In these times of trial, we must not succumb to our darkness, nor to the evil one. Through constant prayer, we must fight back thoughts like "God does not love me" or that "God is punishing me." Satan would love nothing more than to discourage you and for you to believe this garbage. For those who insist on believing that they are being punished, even these have cause to rejoice: "For what good father, who also loves his son , does not also chastize him?" This means no less than God loves them! In all cases, through prayer and God's graces, coupled with frequent reception of the sacraments we must "carpe diem" (seize the day) and use this opportunity to glorify God! We only have to look at the martyrs of the Early Church to know what following Jesus means. They died for the sake of the Kingdom and for the Body of Christ. We too can begin each day, by offering up our sufferings whether physical or temporal to Jesus for the Body of Christ ..... Yes , for others! Not only can we gain eternal life through these sufferings, but Jesus can use our evangelization by example and the merits obtained by our sufferings to help other souls! And our lives begin to have meaning and purpose as well! Look again at the martyrs and you can see that their suffering, instead of eradicating the faith as was the goal of the Romans, only caused the Church to flourish and grow for two thousand years! Their blood served to nourish the Body of Christ. Through our Baptism we share in the Communion of the Saints, both Saints and yet to be saints. We can offer up our merits for those who have died or those still living who need graces, but we need to offer up our sufferings each day. Only through much prayer and frequent reception of the Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist can we too face our sufferings with the same zeal that the martyrs displayed. I ask myself how holy, pious and devout did Jesus feel when He was being spat upon, and whipped and beaten? What consolations from God did He experience when nailed to the cross? The clue was that for a brief moment, He felt alone , and abandoned as we often do when faced with trials, to the point that before He died, He cried out :"Father, why have you abandoned me?" We too can expect much of the same as we face our daily cross. We must remain, like Jesus, secure in the knowledge that God loves us no matter what. We must hold on by faith, persevering to the end as Jesus did. We too can expect few consolations from God while facing these trials. But through prayer and His graces will remain at peace in the face of all adversity, secure in the knowledge that we too are doing God's will, to the point that like Jesus, at the end we can say "Father into thy hands I commend my spirit". Like a loving parent who teaches his child to swim, God begins by having us "test the waters" of our Baptism, gradually removing His consolations until we can swim on our own through faith. This is what St. Paul meant when he wrote to the Philippians and said: "(But) whatever gains I had, these I have come to consider a loss because of Christ. More than that, I even consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having any righteousness of my own based on the law but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God, depending on faith to know him and the power of his resurrection and (the) sharing of his sufferings by being conformed to his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. It is not that I have already taken hold of it or have already attained perfect maturity, but I continue my pursuit in hope that I may possess it, since I have indeed been taken possession of by Christ (Jesus). Brothers, I for my part do not consider myself to have taken possession. Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God's upward calling, in Christ Jesus." (Pilippians 3:7-14) This Holy Week and the rest of our lives, let us remember our Baptism into the Body of Christ and all that it means, so that we truly can be an Easter People and rise to eternal life in Christ Jesus. �Copyright2001 ecatholic2000.com All rights reserved. |
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