Can suffering make sense?

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

It was the last straw for me. I read about a horrible case of a little child who had suffered for many years of abuse and neglect and who died shortly after he was discovered by the police. I raged at God: “How could you allow this to happen?! Where is your love and mercy for a little child?! How can you tolerate such evil in the world without doing anything to stop it?!” Perhaps you’ve asked similar questions in the past, or had similar reason to get angry and frustrated with the God we’re supposed to love, and Who, we’re told, overflows with unconditional love.

I thought about this for a few days, and slowly some insights came to me which calmed my disillusionment and anger. For what it is worth, I share these thoughts with you today.

The first thought is rather simple, and depends on faith in the afterlife, the resurrection of the dead and the justice of God. Somehow, some way, He will make up for this child’s sufferings which ended with his death. I prayed for the child and I hope to see him some day seated in heaven high beyond my own place (if I should make it there myself). I prayed above all that justice will be done, and that the child’s sufferings will somehow be used for good in the world.

The second thought depends on how we think of God and how we consider God. If our image of God is some white-bearded old potentate who sits upon a throne and dispenses justice, retribution and blessings at will, a God to be feared more than loved, a God who, as the cartoons sometimes put it, shoots down thunderbolts from the sky directed at innocent and defenseless people, then the rage rightfully remains and the concepts of justice, mercy and unconditional love are obliterated.

However, I’ve been learning through my own reading and prayer to consider God as the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit in eternal relationship with each other and surrender to each other, with the energy flowing between the three of them the energy of Love. Suffering is included in this notion of the Trinity because, after all, the Son is often referred to as the “Lamb of God,” and the Spirit is sent to console Him during the difficult and painful times of His earthly existence (as for example, at the time of the temptation in the desert). In love, the persons of the Trinity surrender to each other, share everything with each other and also invite us to be part of that relationship, a relationship within which they share our suffering and transform it into the energy of Love. The abused child is welcomed into that relationship somehow, and one can barely imagine what may have taken place during his years of neglect and suffering.

Within this Trinitarian relationship all suffering has its place and all suffering is transformed, including your suffering and mine. If you are currently suffering, claim your relationship within the Trinity and see if it becomes a source of comfort and hope to you. If you have suffered in the past and your suffering has now come to an end, consider how you were cared for during your time of trial even though you were probably unaware of it at the time.

This idea may be difficult to grasp, and I am not sure I have been able to explain it adequately. If you would like to do more reading about this, then I strong recommend you get yourself a copy of The Divine Dance, by Fr. Richard Rohr and experience it for yourself.

God bless you!

HELP ME!!!!!!

Monday, February 27, 2017

At Vigils this morning we were praying Psalm 18 and the following lines caught my attention:

The waves of death rose about me;

the torrents of destruction assailed me;

the snares of the grave entangled me;

the traps of death confronted me.

In my anguish I called to the Lord;

I cried to my God for help.

From his temple he heard my voice;

my cry came to his ears.

What follows is a description of God coming to save the troubled person. In concludes with:

He brought me forth into freedom,

he saved me because he loved me.

As I prayed these lines this morning I realized that I am not oppressed or threatened at the present time. Nonetheless, I could remember a time when I was in dire straits and these words truly express what I was going through. “Help me, O Lord. Get me out of this trial” I wrote again and again in my journal. And then the Lord answered my prayer and help came from an unexpected source, and my deliverance was near at hand. I was indeed brought forth into freedom by my God who heard my prayer and who came to help me out of what I regard as the most difficult time in my life.

But like I said, I am not in such a situation right now. And so I prayed the lines of the psalm for some unknown person who may indeed be begging for deliverance and freedom. And I thought of the millions of people in our troubled world right now, all the refugees and migrants, all those threatened by war and terrorism and natural disasters, and realize that this psalm is incredibly real for all the suffering brothers and sisters in our country and in the world right now.

A little later this morning, I received a phone call from someone who is going through a very difficult time himself at the moment, someone who was calling me for both solace and encouragement and perhaps a word that could sustain him in his struggle. And so I quotes the lines of this psalm to him, along with many other verses throughout the psalter that have a similar message; lines such as Save me, O God, for the waters have risen to my neck; I have sunk into the mud of the deep and there is no foothold.

I was able to offer help out of my own personal experience and out of my daily encounter with the Psalms as well as my lived experience of suffering. I recalled a passage from 2 Corinthians:

Praised be God, the Father of mercies, and the God of all consolation! He comforts us in all our afflictions and thus enables us to comfort those who are in trouble, with the same consolation we have received from him. (2 Co 1:3-4)

Never forget, my friends, that God uses everything you have ever undergone for some good purpose.

God bless you!

For someone who died away from the church

Friday, February 24, 2017

Special reflection:

Note: Many times we are faced with the death or relatives or friends who were baptized Catholic but whose life choices led them away from the Church of their youth, often to ways of living that the Church teaches to be sinful. This homily was written for such an occasion. It gave comfort to the elderly parents of a man who died young, far removed from the faith in which he was raised. It is offered to those who may find themselves in the same circumstances and who are searching for a ray of hope to guide them through the dark days of mourning and questioning. We shall refer to this man, who died at the age of 39, as “George.”

                We Catholics are funny creatures at times. We hold to what we believe to be “the true faith” and yet we are particularly solicitous towards those who share our faith in Christ yet are separated from us because of doctrinal differences or historical circumstances.

                We believe with all our hearts and souls that the true road to salvation and the most powerful means of grace to bring us that salvation are the Sacraments of the Church, particularly Baptism, Penance and Eucharist--and yet when someone dear to us has died separated from those wellsprings of grace, we pray more earnestly than ever for the salvation of his soul. We pray and beg that God’s mercy will extend beyond the grave and that there is still a chance that  the power of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross will “cleanse him, forgive his sins and raise him up to eternal joy in God’s presence,” as we pray in the Post-Communion prayer near the end of the Funeral Mass.

                We believe that presumption is a sin--and so we never presume that we--or any individual soul-is going to be rushed right into heaven at the moment of death--it is important to realize that when Mother Theresa died the Church prayed the same funeral prayers that we will pray today for George-- and therefore we are loathe to assume that even the most notorious sinner will be spared the fate of hell, even when this person has spent a lifetime living a life that appears to be outside the embrace of God. Notice I said appears to be - - for none of can ever truly know the state of a person’s soul, and because Our Lord has taught us most insistently that we are never to judge, never: “The measure with which you measure,” He said, “will be measured back to you.” And so we have been taught not to judge but to hope. We always hope that the wideness of God’s mercy is greater than the scope of anyone’s sins and weaknesses and failings, and we hope that that wideness will be applied to us as well at the moment of our own deaths.

                One might wonder why we bother living Catholic lives in this world if we admit that God’s mercy is not limited to the means of salvation that are ours as Catholics. The answer to the paradox is found within us: We live Catholic lives because our faith is a gift from God to us, and because we have come to realize that by living our faith we find a greater measure of inner peace in this life, an inner peace which nothing, absolutely nothing else can give to us. We know this from experience. Many of us within the Church, including some of the greatest saints in the Church’s history, lived a great number of years searching for that peace outside the faith, and we were never able to find it. Many of us have returned after years of separation from what is sometimes called the “joy of our youth”--in fact, George spoke those very same words when an altar boy at this church: “I will go unto the altar of God, the God who gives joy to my youth.” Ask those who returned; invariably they will tell you that the peace, and the joy of their rediscovered faith is dearer to them than it was before they had left to go searching on their own.

                Some people aren’t given enough time to make this journey home before their earthly life runs its course: this happens particularly when one has died an untimely and unexpected death. But even then, we pray and hope that it is not too late. We take great consolation in something Jesus once said--that “these disciples re God’s gift to me--and no one shall ever snatch them out of my hand. We remember George as an altar server: and we pray that no one can, or will, snatch him out of the Lord’s hand.

                We Catholics are often scoffed at, even by other Christians, because of our doctrine of Purgatory--and yet at times like this we find that the reality of Purgatory is a source of great comfort and hope. The die wasn’t cast for all eternity the night that George died. There is still time for the most important work of his eternal life to be done. We pray that through the merits of the sacrifice of  Christ on the Cross--which extend to every person who has ever made it to heaven, whether they knew Christ or not--we pray that through this sacrifice, George’s journey will be completed, that he will be purified of all sin--just as we hope to be--and that, through some process of transformation and purification known only to God, that George will be brought home, totally cleansed and purified, and that he will rest in peace and one day enter the Kingdom of Heaven to await the final return of all who loved him here on earth, and all who grieve his death here today.

And so now, as we offer the Body and Blood of Christ for the forgiveness of George’s sins, let each of us ask God to help us do what it is that we must do, what our consciences urge us to do, so that one day we too may join him in heaven where there will be no sorrow, no sickness, no death nor wailing or mourning, and where Christ will be the perpetual light that shines upon us forever. Amen.

"Cutting off" our hand

Thursday, February 23, 2017

“Delay not your conversion to the Lord.” (Sirach 5:8)

Stern readings at Mass today. Sirach 5 lists a number of things which, in the long run, are useless when it comes to our righteousness before the Lord:

--wealth

--strength and power

--presumption

--overconfidence in the Lord’s forgiveness

Despite all we have spoken about and reflected upon during the Year of Mercy just past, we cannot keep sinning, presuming that we are already forgiven. God is merciful, yet at the same time He is just. We believe that mercy triumphs over justice, and Jesus demonstrated that many times during His earthly ministry, but that doesn’t mean we can simply presume that we will get away with anything and everything. Sirach makes that clear:

. . . mercy and anger alike are with him;

   upon the wicked alights his wrath. (5:7)

And in today’s Gospel (Mark 9:41-50) Jesus, with radical imagery, advises us to eliminate from our lives anything that causes us to sin. Some of us will remember the old Act of Contrition, in which we pledge to “avoid the near occasion of sin.” As Lent approaches, we do well to put those words into action in our lives. Jesus tells us to pluck out our eye or cut off our hand, and we hope that He is simply using extreme images that can be taken as metaphors. But the message is firm: eliminate what causes us to sin.

I’ll give you a personal example about how things are going in my own life. Ever since the Inauguration of President Trump in the USA, I have been obsessively checking the news and news sources on the Internet, trying to keep track of what is going on in our government. Many Americans have been doing the same during what so many of us see as trying times. But I tried a little experiment: for a few days now, I’ve stopped following what’s been going on, mainly because I realized that my stress and anxiety levels have gone up along with frustration and anger and lack of patience. And so I cut it out, greatly limiting my contact with the news each day. I have experienced an immediate result. And so I find myself less prone to sins of thought and action, since my lack of patience obviously affects those who have to live with me.

Hopefully, you can find some personal ways to cut off what needs to be eliminated from your own life. Don’t forget to ask for help in this endeavor, for the Lord will readily answer such prayers.

God bless you!

The "hope verses"

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Today we resume our reflection on Sirach 2 which we began yesterday.

There are a few lines in this chapter that I consider to be the hope verses which follow the discussion of trials, adversity, “crushing humiliation” and the like. These verses are so special to me that I once wrote a song based on them which we still sing from time to time at the Abbey. Here are the verses (Sirach 2:7-9). I am attempting to post a picture of the music on this page as well. Please note that it is copywrited ©1983, Bede Camera and Saint Anselm Abbey.

You who fear the Lord, wait for his mercy,

   turn not away lest you fall.

You who fear the Lord, trust him,

   and your reward will not be lost.

You who fear the Lord, hope for good things,

   for lasting joy and mercy.

Time and time again in our lives we are faced with situations and experiences that are so daunting or even frightening that we can find great consolation, encouragement and hope in these verses. I encourage you to memorize them.

Notice that the verses demand a certain response from us. They exhort us to be patient (wait for his mercy), to trust even when things are going wrong that there is a reward waiting for us at the end of our ordeal, and finally to hope for what we may not be experiencing at the moment we pray these lines: lasting joy and mercy.

These are the things that await us when we can turn to the Lord at a moment when we might not even feel He is present or that He is acting in our lives. And in such situations we can turn to the Lord Who has endured far worse trials than we can every undergo, to the point where He cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” but then rediscovered his capacity to hope and to trust: “Into your hands I commit my spirit.”

Don’t give up.

God bless you.

Your suffering has a purpose

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

I remember when I made my first visit to a monastery and was seeking guidance from the Prior. One of the first things he told me to do was to go and memorize chapter 2 of the Book of Sirach. I took his advice and it bore fruit. This chapter has been a faithful support throughout the years of my monastic life, and I have turned to it again and again in good times as well as in times of trial and difficulty. And it turns out that this chapter is often read on the Feast of Saint Benedict and on the occasions of monastic professions, so it is a chapter which is dear to monks and nuns. It also happens to be the first reading for today’s Mass.

The chapter is brutally honest and doesn’t beat around the bush:

                When you come to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for trials.  (*I’m using an older translation from the New American Bible because that is the one I hold in my heart. I don’t care for the translation being used at Mass today; I feel it is too wordy and tends to weaken the power of the message.)

It provides good and solid advice for those undergoing those trials:

                Be steadfast, undisturbed in times of adversity.

It tells us to “toughen up,” surrendering to the moment no matter what it brings, and reminds us that there is a purpose in our suffering:

                Accept whatever befalls you, in crushing misfortune be patient;

                For in fire gold is tested, and worthy men in the crucible of humiliation.

And after all this, it reminds us that, to borrow the words of a song, we never walk alone.

                Trust God and he will help you; make straight your ways and hope in him.

It reminds us to remember what the Lord has done in the past:

Study the generations long past and understand;

has anyone hoped in the Lord and been disappointed?

Has anyone persevered in his fear and been forsaken?

Has anyone called upon him and been rebuffed?

This last passage underscores for us just how important it is that we become aware of the stories and characters of salvation history so that we can grow in the virtue of hope.

More about this wonderful chapter tomorrow.

God bless you!

Help my unbelief

Monday, February 20, 2017

Jesus said to him: ”Everything is possible to one who has faith.” Then the boy’s father cried out, “I do believe, help my unbelief.” (Mark 9:23-24)

I remember one instance in my life where I was very anxious about something and I prayed with great fervor for the situation to be resolved in a particular way that very day. Let me add to this that the outcome I had prayed for was highly unlikely, considering the circumstances.

I reproached myself for being so very explicit about how God was to work things out, but then this beautiful line from the Gospel came to mind: Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief and it gave me the courage to pray as I was praying.

Within the next hour, the situation was resolved exactly the way I had asked for. Thanks be to God.

I love these few words from the Gospel and the translation that makes it so clean and almost symmetrical: I believe, help my unbelief. I’ve encountered other translations that attempt to paraphrase the man’s words such as, I do believe, help my lack of trust, but the paraphrase is weak. In attempting to describe “unbelief” (which is an exact translation of the Greek word used here), the paraphrase actually limits it to one particular state of mind. “Unbelief” can mean so many other things besides.

Examples:

                I believe but I think I might be asking for too much.

                I believe but I hesitate in my prayer.

                I believe but I have some doubts about the matter.

                I believe but “would you really do this for me?”

                I believe but I feel guilty about what I am asking.

                I believe but when I pray for world peace it just looks so impossible to happen in my lifetime.

                I believe but I don’t really deserve to have my prayer answered.

                I believe but . . . . .  (Perhaps you can add your own examples to the list.)

The truth of the matter, however, is that the Lord has told us to “ask, seek, knock.” He has also told us that if we had the faith the size of a mustard seed, we could “say to this sycamore, ‘Be uprooted and transplanted into the sea, and it would obey you.” (Luke 17:6)

How small our faith must be. “Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief.”

Above all, however, believe that God loves us unconditionally and wants you to make it to heaven, and He continually wishes to pour graces upon us, graces that we ask for and graces that our feeble minds can scarcely comprehend. So pray boldly. Pray constantly. And above all, pray for an increase of faith.

God bless you!