Lec
# 108- 16th Sun of OT- July 21, 2013- Fr. Bresowar
It’s
good to be here with you my brothers and sisters on this 16th Sunday
of Ordinary Time.
About
5 years ago while I was still studying for the priesthood, I was on a summer
assignment in Atlanta at Emory University Hospital. During the assignment I was
with ministers and or students of other Christian denominations for a program
called Clinical Pastoral Experience. Essentially, it was clinicals for pastoral
care of individuals who were in the hospital.
I
was with a Baptist minister, a Presbyterian, a couple of Methodist ministers,
and a few Episcopalian students. I was the only Catholic in my group.
And
what we would do is we would individually go and visit patients in the
hospitals, sit with them, pray with them, draw on our own knowledge to counsel
them, and then come back as a group and reflect over our experiences and
critique each other.
Well,
I remember in one of our groups sessions, one of the other ministers was
reflecting on the absurdity of suffering and pain, and ultimately death. She
had visited frequently one of the patients in the hospital who was terminal and
eventually the patient died.
For
her, and some of the others in my group, the question of why people suffered
was a very challenging one for their faith. They had a difficult time grasping that
people must die, and spiritually speaking, it was extremely difficult for their
faith.
Each
person in my group was asked to respond briefly to the question concerning our
belief as to what is the cause of pain and suffering in the world, and how to
cope with it.
Amazingly,
each person in my group, in trying to explain human suffering and how to cope
with it, had their own kind of unique perspective. Some said to sit with it,
same said to change one’s perspective and see it as something to be conquered,
some said to look at nature, others had no answer. When it came time for me to
answer, the Catholic in the room, the one is who has the reputation amongst
learned Protestants for not knowing the bible, answered the question this way.
They asked, “Vincent, what is your take on suffering, it’s causes and how to
cope with it?”
Well
as Catholic, I don’t have my own unique perspective, the answer is already
given to me... I said, “We suffer because Sin is in the world.”
Well,
you would have thought I insulted each of their mothers. They did not like that
answer. I got immediate backlash! “What do you mean? That the person who died,
her suffering and pain, was caused by her sin?”
I
said, let’s go back to the Bible, before the fall of Adam and Eve. Before the
fall, was there sin and suffering in the world? They said no… I said after the
sin of Adam and Eve, death entered the world, and death is the end of
suffering, the wage of sin then, is Death.
Then
I asked, “If Adam and Eve represent fallen man and woman, of which we are members
of, does it not seem logical, theologically speaking, for those of us who
believe in God, that suffering is a consequence of Sin?”
Blank
stares. But that’s not the rest of story, I told them, we already have the
solution to the problem.
You
see, Jesus Christ didn’t come to save us from suffering, he came to save us
through suffering.
Suffering
is unavoidable, an unfortunate consequence of our rejection, as men and women,
of God’s plan.
And
yet, what is it that Paul says today in the second reading?
He
says, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake!” I rejoice in my
sufferings! Isn’t that kind of strange? How many of us are willingly rejoicing
when we suffer? Most of us are trying avoid it at all cost because suffering is
extremely difficult. And yet Paul is teaching us a radically different reaction
then maybe has ever been taught before?
He
says,
• "...[I]n my flesh I am filling
up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, on behalf of his body,
which is the Church."
•
Christ opened the
floodgates of grace by accepting God's will, even when it caused him to
suffer.
•
But that grace still needs to
make its way to sinners in need of salvation.
•
How does it get to
them? Through the Church.
•
And how is the Church able to deliver
it? Through her members doing exactly what Christ did: accepting
God's will, even when it causes them to suffer.
•
St Paul realizes that a Christian,
someone united to Christ by faith, can in this way be a co-redeemer with
Christ, a channel through which Christ's saving grace continues to flow
into the world.
Jesus didn't save us from
suffering. He saved us through suffering.
•
Suffering entered the world as
a result of sin.
•
Jesus saves us from sin
by giving meaning to that suffering, by turning it inside out, by
making it an instrument of salvation.
•
Of all the world's religions, only
Christianity gives transcendent meaning to human suffering.
And so, every Christian, like St
Paul, can now "rejoice in their sufferings", because we know
that when we unite them to Christ's cross through faith, they "fill
up what is lacking", they become channels of God's saving
grace.
This
is a theological Truth which unfortunately has been lost amongst many of our
Protestant brothers and sisters. And yet, even as Catholics we struggle with
the idea at times of uniting our sufferings to Christ for the redemption of the
world.
Satan
does not want us to suffering willingly for the sake of salvation as a co-reedmer
with Jesus Christ. That’s the path to his defeat. Rather…
He
seeks to confuse and muddle our hearts and intellects through suffering. HE
seeks a reaction, which abandons trust in God, and forgets that suffering with
Christ destroys death and ultimately defeats Satan, sin and it’s effects.
So,
if we have a hard time understanding this or believing this, or if suffering
has caused us too much pain in our lives that we have forgotten that Jesus has
given new meaning to it, the invitation, as it has been for the last 2000
years, is to offer, like Paul, the expert in suffering, all kinds of our
sufferings, not just physical, but emotional, every suffering, every
temptation, in union with the cross of Jesus Christ for the redemption of the
world.
Countless
souls in purgatory would truly appreciate it if we did this, because it is in
doing so, that they come to the glory of the Beatific Vision.
And
yet we can partipcate also in atonement for our sins and the sins of the world
as well. We can, because Christ did, turn suffering into an instrument, a
channel of Grace.
I
find that when I feel most attacked by the enemy, in my temptations to not
trust God and to turn to the world and it’s attractions to solve my problems,
when I offer my sufferings for God’s purposes instead of giving in, the
temptation often times goes away. Satan hates when we turn his weapon against
him and he runs away.
So
suffering is an effect of Sin in the world, and the cross is how we cope with
it. This is the message we must live and must give to the world. When people
ask us how do we overcome suffering, we tell them, because we are trying
ourselves to live it, we overcome it by Jesus Christ and the cross. Then we
will learn and understand that to rejoice in our sufferings as Paul did, as
countless Saints did, is our joy, is our salvation, is our hope, and is our
path to Jesus Christ.
