Joyfully Embracing Suffering

Recently I received an excellent example.  Once again someone right in front of me showed me how I am called to live.  

Yet again I have seen how living is found through dying.  I am reminded once more that all of us must decide how we view the sacrifice Jesus made for us.  In how we choose to respond, we determine the path we take.  In how we reply to Jesus giving Himself up for us, we set ourselves up for despair, or ultimately for rejoicing.  

I was reminded of these critical choices as I was speaking with a particular person about what material assistance she required, and how she could get it.  As we spoke with each other, suddenly tears welled up in her eyes.  Her voice cracked.  She said that she had watched the film "The Passion of the Christ" a half dozen times.  She said that every time she watches that film, she can't believe how we have treated Jesus.  

This woman, with whom I have interacted countless times, is showing me how I am to be grieved at the suffering and death of our Lord Jesus.  She demonstrates to me how my spirit is to ache at how Jesus died to save us.  

She recognizes the sacrifice Jesus made for us.  In that giving of Himself for us, she sees the great love Jesus has for us.  Since He has so loved us, she is greatly distressed when she considers how we have sorely mistreated Him.  

Who is this woman who is so disturbed at how we have so abused Jesus?  One might expect her always to have exhibited exemplary behavior.  Yet at one point, she was convicted of committing a felony.  Is that all she is?  We are defined by the choices we make, by the decisions we made which we now disavow, by who we embrace, by who we love.  Warm and loving people are in our lives, here to help us love.  Will we listen to them?  There are people in our lives who have opened their hearts to Jesus.  Will we close our hearts to them and to what they have to teach us?  

If we're busy judging someone, we can't learn from that person.  The individual we're convinced is worthless might be one who is worthy of our attention.  The person we think is failing in life in fact might be one for us to emulate.  

Due to our stubborn refusal to learn from those who have been sent to minister to us, we end up in spiritual shadows.  We insist upon standing in shadows rather than stepping forward into the light being shown towards us.  We turn aside from those who can teach us how to embrace the Cross and how to die to ourselves so we can live for our neighbor.  

There have been times I have been in spiritual turmoil, and after emerging from such spiritual darkness, I have realized that I had been in the midst of such spiritual turbulence because I had failed to reverence the Cross.  We would not struggle as we do if we were to meditate fruitfully upon the Passion of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  

I am not saying that we will not undergo trials if we properly value the sacrifice Jesus made for us.  I am saying that with appropriate reverence for His Passion, we would feel our apparent misfortune to be not so much of an ordeal but rather a gift.  Knowing that through His death and resurrection, Jesus set us free from the bonds of sin, and that through adversity we are purified and sanctified and drawn back home to God, we come to value hardship, even to welcome it joyfully, and thus come to view it illuminated in a completely new and transformative light.  

When the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich felt that she was being assaulted by demons, she fixed her eyes on the Cross.  After God had delivered her from the temptations she had been enduring, Jesus reminded her that the Devil is overcome through the Cross.  

We are lifted out of discomfort through our embracing of pain.  We are delivered from torment through the suffering of Jesus.  We are saved by embracing Jesus.  We are saved when we give up our lives for others.  We are saved when we love others as Jesus has loved us.*    

And so Jesus instructed Julian of Norwich to take comfort in the Cross.  He told her to trust in the Cross.  He assured her that she would not be overcome.  

And so we are all faced with this fundamental choice.  Do we capitulate to fear, or do we trust in God?  Out of pride, do we hide ourselves from God, not wanting to approach God, refusing to acknowledge that we are defenseless without Him?**  Do we turn to Jesus and embrace Him?  Do we turn toward the sacrifice we are called to make for our neighbor?  

While Jesus died for us, in addition to this generous gift of the sacrifice of His Son, God also gave us our free will.  Herein lies our part: we must choose.  Saint Augustine explained that "The God who made you without your cooperation will not save you without your cooperation."  For God to save us, we must turn to God.   

If we turn away from God, we act from a place of pride.  Pride leads to ruin.  If we turn to God, we value humility.  Humility leads to salvation.  

The person who is humble will find no cause for griping.  For when we truly and accurately grasp reality, we see that we have no cause for complaint.  

When we realize we are nothing, we see we can do nothing without God.  If we embrace our true identity, we recognize that we are to completely rely on God and welcome everything that He allows to come to us.  

Jesus embraced his true identity.  He saw that He was not only the Messiah, but also was the suffering servant foretold by the prophet Isaiah.***    

When we consider that Jesus did not have to suffer and die for us, but that He did so because He sought to do the will of His Heavenly Father, our perspective on pain shifts.  Jesus died for us because He loves us, for God is love.****  When we remember how much God loves us, how much God has given us, then we are led to embrace the obstacles we encounter.  Then, as Julian of Norwich reminds us, we see that "we should meekly and patiently bear and suffer the penance that God gives us, with mind of His blessed Passion.  For when we have mind of His blessed Passion, with pity and love, then we suffer with Him like as did His friends that saw it."  

If we meditate deeply on how Jesus was persecuted and on how He died for us, we hurt with Him.  Then we feel anguish out of love for Jesus, because we have crucified Him.  

There is a tendency also, when we are in agony, to assume that we have brought misfortune upon ourselves through our own imprudent choices.  Don't think that every hardship that falls upon you is your fault.  Jesus told Julian of Norwich, "Accuse not yourself that your tribulation and your woe is all your fault."  
Nor should we think, even when we have tried our utmost to lead outstanding lives, that God is unjustly punishing us when disaster befalls us.  Jesus also directed Julian of Norwich not to expect a lack of trials, saying to her, "For I tell you: whatever you do, you will have woe."  Even if we live in an upright manner, nevertheless inevitably we are going to have troubles.  We should anticipate that we will endure hardships.  

Despite the torments in this life now, in light of what awaits us on the other side of death, Julian of Norwich realized about this unavoidable agony we feel now in this life, that "this place is a prison: this life is a penance.  And in the remedy for it, He wills that we rejoice.  The remedy is that our Lord is with us, keeping us, and leading us to fullness of joy.  For this is endless joy to us, in our Lord's meaning, that He that will be our bliss when we come there--He is our keeper while we are here, our way and our Heaven in true love and faithful trust."  

Thus we are led to view our difficulties in perspective.  To appreciate suffering, we must be humble as Jesus was and is.  To realize the full value of our own pain, we must be grateful for how Jesus was agonized for us.  To be delivered from our distress, to be brought out of death into life, we are called to trust as Jesus trusted His Heavenly Father.  

In this life we can be sure that at times we are going to be in misery.  We can find meaning in our pain if we are open to what God is trying to show us.  We can learn if we open our hearts to how God wants to teach us through our neighbor.  

While we may feel that the torments of this life are nothing but torture, in such challenges we may be tasting the cure for all our woes.  Although we may find it difficult to do so, if we accept trying circumstances as opportunities for growth, we will become more than we have been.  Jesus showed us, through how He lived His earthly life, how we are to face pain.  We are to embrace suffering, through which we love our neighbor.  By dying to ourselves, so that we may live to our neighbor, we are saved.  When we welcome discomfort out of love of neighbor, we welcome our salvation.  

When we see that suffering out of love leads to salvation, we rejoice in the midst of hardships.  We triumph in the victory of the Cross because in His death and His resurrection, Jesus conquered death.  Death holds no power over those who have realized and embraced the saving power of the Cross.  Then, in dying, we are born to eternal life, as Jesus taught us when He walked on this earth, and as He continues to teach us.  

Jesus is always with us.*****  Jesus is sending His Holy Spirit upon us, reminding us of all He has told us.******  Jesus is guiding us into all truth,******* The Truth of who He is, and the truth of who we are.  When we finally realize the truth, we are set free,******** and so we rejoice.   

As Julian of Norwich explained that Jesus wills for us, if we shift our hearts from the pain we feel to the bliss that we trust to have, we will start to feel a slight foretaste of the joy waiting for us for eternity in Heaven.  If we have the humility to trust that God is drawing us back home to Him through our current afflictions, we are given the grace and strength we need to endure these present difficulties.*********    

When we have genuine faith in God, we welcome all that happens, whether it be pain or comfort.  If we truly trust in God, we open our hearts to all that God is trying to teach us.  When we embrace all that happens, we will be joyful.  If we trust God, we know that God loves us.  Knowing the truth that God loves us infinitely, we rejoice.  If we see the truth now, in an abundance of joy, we begin to live in eternal life while still on earth.  

* John 13:34 
** Genesis 3:8 
*** Isaiah 42, 49, 50, 52, 53, 61 
**** 1 John 4:8; 1 John 4:16  
***** Matthew 28:20 
****** John 14:26 
******* John 16:13 
******** John 8:32 
********* 1 Peter 5:5; James 4:6  

Keep On Loving

Today I write to you of love.  I write to you about the love of a woman for a man.  I have seen it with my own eyes, and so I testify to it.*  As usual, I write to you of what I know.  And as I typically aim to do, I witness to how the Gospel is being lived out in front of me.  

I see my neighbor forgiving my neighbor.  I recognize my neighbor consenting to the love of God being shown through her.  I hold in high regard when my neighbor lets God love others through her.  We love our neighbor when we forgive our neighbor.  Jesus instructed us to keep forgiving our neighbor.  Saint Peter asked Jesus, "Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him?  As many as seven times?"  Jesus answered, "I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times."**  God calls us to forgive our neighbor over and over and over again, and to keep on forgiving our neighbor after that.  We are to keep on loving our neighbor despite how he or she keeps falling.  

I have seen this tireless love and devotion shown by a particular woman to her boyfriend here in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Countless times I've interacted with a certain homeless woman, who I'll call "Jocelyn" here, and with her homeless boyfriend who I'll call "Jonny" here.  Despite Jonny's repeated self-defeating choices, Jocelyn has remained with him.  

I had heard that Jonny was addicted to a hard drug.  Someone had also told me that Jocelyn could easily stop being homeless.  This person opined that Jocelyn was obstructed from moving out of homelessness because she was persistently staying with her boyfriend.  This person insinuated that Jocelyn could help herself, but she was refusing to do so because she was insisting on remaining with her boyfriend.  

Essentially Jocelyn has kept putting someone else before herself.  She has kept loving her neighbor without counting the cost to herself.  

Jocelyn imitates Jesus.  Jesus gave Himself up on the Cross to save us, who are sinners.  

While He was on the Cross, Jesus was mocked by the soldiers who told Jesus to save Himself if He was the King of the Jews.  The leaders who were there jeered at Him that if He was the Messiah, that He should save Himself.  One of the two criminals being crucified next to Jesus also abused Him, demanding that Jesus save Himself as well as the two of them.***  Jesus could have saved Himself but He did not.  Rather than save Himself, He died on the Cross from love of us, praying for us even though we had ignored, mocked, disrespected, tortured and abused Him.  

It might seem foolish not to save yourself when you can.  Maybe it seems like deciding to die when you can live.  Yet in the perspective through which you choose to view the world, you determine whether your outlook is setting you on a path to being saved or to being lost, being on the road to life or to death, both for yourself and for others.  Saint Paul explains that "the message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."****  

Those who do not love will perish.  People who do not give of themselves are doomed.  When you love, you choose to be saved.  When you persist in loving, despite all indications that your demise is imminent, actually you are working not only to be saved but also so that others may be saved.  When you love despite all evidence suggesting that your love is ineffective, you are loving from faith.  When you love not paying attention to appearances, you are putting credit in faith.   

The medieval mystic Julian of Norwich assures us, "All will be well."  When we say that all will be well, despite what we see to the contrary, we make an assertion of faith.  

If we truly have faith, we are fixing the foundation of our souls, our hearts, our minds and our bodies on what we do not see.  As Saint Paul wrote, "We look not to what is seen, but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal."***** 

Do not think that I am speaking merely of rewards that we will see only in the next life.  Certainly here I address the glory which will be revealed to us in the life to come.  Yet if you have faith and trust in God, you also reap the fruits of that faith now in this life.  I am not speaking in hypothetical terms, trying to assure you of things which I believe but have not seen.  As I have already said, I tell you of what I have seen.  

I have seen the change in his appearance.  I have seen the deep crevices disappear from Jonny's face over the last few weeks, deep lines which are symptomatic of abuse of hard drugs.  

I have witnessed the change in his behavior, how this month he walked up to me and greeted me with a wholeheartedly warm embrace.  Months ago he would barely acknowledge my presence upon crossing paths.  

Upon greeting him a few weeks ago and asking him how he was doing, I heard him excitedly proclaim to me, "Doug, I've gotten a job!"  After I had witnessed all of these and other signs of improving health, Jocelyn told me, "He stopped using the needle weeks ago."  

Jocelyn kept loving Jonny.  She did not give up on him.  She did not like what she saw, and she told him so.  I was present one day when in public she loudly and vehemently made clear to him that he did not look good, and that she was displeased with his behavior.  Yet she did not abandon him.  She kept loving him, despite his appearance, which was not promising.  Although she was not encouraged by his behavior, by what she saw, she moved forward in faith, in the hope she had for a better future.  

For centuries people have trusted in God, having hope in God's promise, having confidence that God can and will work wonders.  Indeed God will show us marvels if we will but have faith in Him.  In the fourth century, Saint Monica prayed indefatigably for years for her son Saint Augustine of Hippo.  After years of praying for him, he experienced a conversion: his life was reformed and he repented of his sins.  Having such faith in God, and being miraculously transformed from such faith, we enter into a new kind of life.  In the film "Restless Heart," Saint Monica says to her son Saint Augustine, "We are already living in eternal life."  Saint Monica and Saint Augustine lived such lives of faith in God, with such hope in His promise, that even in this lifetime, they had already begun living in eternal life.  

In this time, right now, the work before us is that of faith and hope, for we hope for what we do not see.******  The work of love is also now.  Jesus instructed us to love one another as He has loved us.*******  As Jesus has loved us, and died for us, now we are to die to ourselves for our neighbor, so that we and our neighbor may be saved.  Now we are to love out of faith and hope.  

Later, in the next life, we will see the fruits of our faith and hope.  In the next life, faith and hope will be realized in the love we will then experience.  For those in Heaven, that love will never end, for God is eternal, and God is love.********  And so love is eternal and will never end.  For those of us in Heaven, when we are in eternity, we will be with God, and so we will be with love forever.  

So keep on loving now.  In the end, love will rule.  Love will reign in Heaven once we get there, just as it rules there now.  Love now, and keep on loving.  Step onto the bridge of love which Saint Catherine of Siena described, that boundless love of Jesus, which will take you on The Way into eternal love.  Step into eternal life now.  Live the life of love now you are meant to live forever.  

* 1 John 1:1-3 
** Matthew 18:21-22 
*** Luke 23:35-39
**** 1 Corinthians 1:18 
***** 2 Corinthians 4:18 
****** Romans 8:25
******* John 13:34 
******** 1 John 4:8; 1 John 4:16