Suffering's ultimate destiny

Monday, August 21, 2016

From the first reading for the Mass for Monday of the 21^st Week in Ordinary Time:

“We ourselves boast of you in the churches of God regarding your endurance and faith in all your persecutions and the afflictions you endure.” (2 Thes 1:4)

I don’t need to know you personally to know that you have had to endure “persecutions and afflictions” in your life. Big one’s perhaps, or even things that may seem trivial to other but which have irked and disturbed you: the neighbor’s dog eats your flowers, the monk next to me in choir sings off-key, the fact that your boss doesn’t appreciate the quality of your work, the people who make wrong assumptions about you, the teenager who constantly gives you lip or wrong attitude, your psoriasis or eating disorder or . . . . . and the list goes on, seemingly infinitely.

Take a moment in prayer now if you can, and bundle all of those things up into one package: all you afflictions and difficulties. And once you have done that, lay that bundle at the foot of the crucifix and again, if you can, take time to gaze on the crucifix and see what it has to teach you about your bundle. You don’t need any special knowledge or theological sophistication: these things have never been a requirement to learn from the crucifix.

Just gaze upon it and be conscious of your breathing for as brief or long a time as you have available. What does it tell you? Think about that for a while before scrolling down to the rest of this reflection.

The message of the crucifix is that your God can identify with your suffering not merely because He is the all-knowing God, but because through Jesus Christ he has participated in the reality of human suffering and pain and even death. And having participated in all these things, he took them to himself and transformed them through the reality of His resurrection.

One of the many messages we can take from this reality is this, and it takes faith to accept it because it is so counter-cultural: All suffering ends in resurrection.

I might not be telling you something you don’t already know, but perhaps I am putting a finger on a reality that is easy to overlook in the storms and darkness of our lives.

Think back: All suffering ends in resurrection.

Perhaps this has already happened in your life many times over, and most likely, you are still undergoing a form of suffering that has not yet reached its ultimate goal. But it will. Again, gaze upon the crucifix and let it teach you, perhaps without words, since the reality is so much greater than we can adequately put into words.

God bless you!