Lec # 23- 1st Sun of Lent, Feb 26, 2012-
Fr. Bresowar
About three years ago now, I was assigned during the summer of 2009 to be work at hospital in Atlanta with the Emory system in what was called Clinical Pastoral Education. For those of you who are unaware, the whole process of seminary education and formation from beginning to end takes about 6-8 years. If you go in right out of high school it usually 8 years (usually, sometimes it can be more), but if you get your undergrad first before you go to seminary, it is usually 6 years. Two years of philosophy courses, and then four years of theology courses. And it’s pretty much like a regular college except that everyone is trying to discern priesthood and there are no girls studying to be priests. So the party scene is I guess lame in comparison. But that’s a good thing. Most guys have gotten over that by the time they go to seminary. And each summer, of those six years that a man is training to be a priest, there is a different assignment for the seminarian to get pastoral experience, because during the school year it’s pretty much all academics and formation.
Usually, the summers assignments are in a parish, which is why during the summers depending on where you go to Church, you may see a seminarian (a seminarian is what they call men training to be priests) helping out at the parish, and getting pastoral experience. I had 3 summer assignments in different parishes in our diocese, and one in Mexico to immerse myself in the Hispanic culture and to practice Spanish (which I wish I had taken more seriously), and then one in the hospital at Emory in Atlanta. The purpose of the hospital assignment was two-fold, one which I thought was very practical, was to gain experience in having to minister in very tough situations, walking in to the unknown of a hospital room, not having any idea what you are about to encounter, and just having to learn to go in and let Jesus do his thing. To take what you have learned at seminary, along with your own formation, and apply it to real life situations of human suffering. It’s not easy to do, but, that’s part of what we do as priests. We bring Christ to the sick and the suffering. It’s a beautiful thing to witness Christ in the sacraments, especially the sacraments of anointing, reconciliation and the Eucharist, and to see the effect his grace has on those who are truly suffering and on their families who suffering with them. Now as a seminarian I didn’t have the sacraments at my disposal, which is a real drawback for the ministry to the those who are suffering, especially for ministers of other faiths who don’t know what they are missing out on, but I was still able to bring Christ in prayer and just the human experience of being present in the moment. Christ works, most especially, and most amazingly and specifically through his sacraments, but also in a different way, in each of us when we allow him to do so, sometimes just being present without saying a word is all he needs. So I got a lot of practical experience of learning to overcome the fear of going in to the unknown and being ready to minister no matter what I encountered. That was valuable.
The other part of the hospital experience which I thought was less practical, but of some value, was to take our experiences of visiting with the patients and have group evaluation. So there was 7 of us that would meet during the week multiple times to go over our appointments with patients, and critique each other on how we did according to the group. I was the only Catholic in a group of 7 people. There is nothing wrong with that of course, and it was good experience to learn about other faiths, but it was difficult too because the understanding of human suffering, the theology of Christ the redeemer, who came to destroy death and suffering, and the doctrine of original sin, communal sin, how every sin effects everyone, how death and suffering were brought into the world through sin, this understanding just was not present in the people of other faiths in my group.
So we would discuss the question of human suffering, and it was often times a major crisis of faith for the other members of the group. Without a good understanding of original sin, without a adequate theology, an understanding of free will, and a theology of the Cross, it’s hard to trust that there is a meaning behind or a purpose for human suffering.
Now, I couldn’t explain why certain things happened to certain individuals, especially if there is no gun, or direct cause and effect, only God knows why he allows that, but I did make it a point to explain that before sin entered the world, there was no suffering. That pain, death, suffering, ultimately are all effects of sin. Maybe my individual suffering is not related to my own personal sin, or the personal sin of you, or a patient in the hospital, but all together, collectively as a human race, represented by Adam and Eve, when sin entered the world, as all of us sin, death and it’s effects entered the world.
This was hard for the members of my group to grasp; it was a foreign idea, that sin could cause suffering, that sin does cause suffering, even those who don’t deserve suffering, like infants in the womb who suffer from illnesses or even abortion, still suffer because sin and death still exist.
The good news is though, as I tried to point out to my group is, that Christ makes all things new. Christ gives meaning to suffering. God who loves us into eternity, and loves his son for all eternity, sends his only son, to die on a cross and rise on the third day, for one purpose, redemption. The cross is the stumbling block to the world, and foolishness to those who have no faith. But to those of us who believe, it is the power and wisdom of God.
Knowing that sin caused death, Christ comes to take up the cross, to win victory over death, as only He can do, by taking on all of our suffering, all of our sins, all of the pain caused by human weakness, and nailing it to the cross. He won for us the victory over death. And he invites us to do the same with our own sufferings. Our sufferings, now that we belong to Christ, and are members of his one body, have redeeming value.
This is amazing if you think about it. United to the sufferings of Christ, he takes our own sufferings, and he uses them to save the world and to purify it. Our sufferings have no purpose apart from him, except death, but because of him, who defeated the ultimate death, our sufferings have infinite value.
You may ask then, if he came to defeat death, why did he still allow it to exist? Why do we still suffer? Well, because of us, we rejected him, and so the kingdom is not ushered in yet. There is no suffering in Heaven. He will come again to usher in the kingdom and flush out death forever. Until then, For us who remain with our free will, we wait, persevere, and suffer, and try to avoid sin knowing that if we live with Christ, we will die with Him, and if we die with him, we will rise with Him.
My father contracted stomach cancer when he was 47 years old. I was 15 at the time. I didn’t understand, I still don’t understand, why God allowed that to happen to Him. Why God took him home at an early age. Why God allows bad things to happen to good people, especially infants in the womb. But I do know that before sin ever entered the world, there was no illness, there was no cancer, there was no death, there was no injustice, and that because sin is in the world, all those things exist. And yet, I also know that my father who suffered greatly for a year, did not suffer in vain. He entered into the passion of Christ in his suffering, and the goodness that God brought out of that suffering, which I won’t know the full extent of until I see my father again in Heaven, is unfathomable. It’s infinite. Sometimes we see the good effects that God can bring out of suffering, other times we don’t, we must have faith.
Let us pray, as we enter into the desert of reflection, of forgiveness and penance, that we will have the grace to suffer well, to take up our cross when asked to do so, and persevere knowing that our suffering is not meaningless anymore, that it is united to the cross of Christ and is part of his mission to redeem the world.
