SUFFERING, in any form, has to be
viewed from the
perspective of faith. It should be taken out from an overly human
outlook that restricts it to its purely negative, painful and
destructive character. There’s a lot more to our suffering than what
our senses and our reasoning unaided by faith can cope and discover.
When we suffer, let’s be quick to see and go through it
with Christ, who said that “if anyone wishes to come after me, he must
deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Lk 9,23)
With that outlook, we are convinced that any suffering is always for
our own good—for our purification, strengthening, conversion, etc.
First, we have to understand that our suffering was not
meant for us in the beginning of our existence. Nor is it meant for
our end. It came about as consequence of our mishandling our freedom,
that supreme gift God our Father and Creator endowed us with at our
first creation in Adam and Eve.
We have to make that qualification of “first creation,”
because our creation is actually an ongoing affair that is played out
in stages all throughout time.
There’s the first creation by God the Father of Adam and
Eve, endowing us with the best of gifts like our freedom, then our
second creation in Jesus to introduce the crucial correcting element
of the cross in our life once we misuse our freedom, and the third
stage which is our personal sanctification through the work of the
Holy Spirit.
The business of creation takes the whole of time and, in
fact, covers the entirety of our existence, since it involves our very
existence itself. For as long as we exist, our creation continues to
take place.
From the point of view of God who lives in eternity, this
whole process is just but a blink to him. “One day with the Lord is as
a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” (2 Pt 3,8) Of
course, from our point of view, all this process covers the whole of
time.
Back to our freedom, we have to understand that it’s that
gift that makes us image and likeness of God. Together with our
intelligence, it enables us to mirror God’s greatness is us. With
God’s grace, it lets us enter God’s life itself, sharing that divine
life and perfecting our ultimate identity.
We are not mere creatures like the others that come from
God and belong to him, but do not participate in the very intimate
life of God. We are the masterpiece of his creation, charged to be
stewards of the whole of creation.
But all the goodness that our freedom gives us turned sour
when we abused it. As a consequence, the good things are now replaced
with bad things that make us suffer. This is the origin of our
suffering that continues to grow, morph and spread in ways we cannot
account anymore.
Still, God has not abandoned us, and instead has
undertaken a very complicated plan to recover us, sending his Son to
become man and effect our own redemption through the Cross.
With the Cross, he has made the very cause of our downfall
also as the very means of our salvation. The Cross is where sin is
transformed to grace, death to life, darkness to light.
And thus, now with the help of the Holy Spirit, we have to
understand the true value of our cross—all the sufferings we have to
endure in this life. Let’s not waste too much time figuring out why we
suffer and how we can overcome it. These we will always do somehow,
but we should not stop there.
Every suffering we have should be an invitation for us to
go back to Christ, to be converted again, that is, to identify
ourselves with him through the work of the Holy Spirit, so we can
effect in our mortal flesh that very transformation that took place in
Christ, who died and rose from the dead.
This is the challenge we have—how to go beyond mere human
considerations of our suffering so as to savor its ultimate religious
value. We need to develop the skill to escape from the self-focusing
dynamics of suffering that only leads to a dead-end when considered
only humanly, to be able to hitch ourselves with the saving dynamics
of Christ’s suffering.
Are we just contented with complaining and groaning and
moaning when we suffer? Or do we start as soon as we can to enter,
through faith, into the more glorious dimensions that our suffering
offers?
perspective of faith. It should be taken out from an overly human
outlook that restricts it to its purely negative, painful and
destructive character. There’s a lot more to our suffering than what
our senses and our reasoning unaided by faith can cope and discover.
When we suffer, let’s be quick to see and go through it
with Christ, who said that “if anyone wishes to come after me, he must
deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Lk 9,23)
With that outlook, we are convinced that any suffering is always for
our own good—for our purification, strengthening, conversion, etc.
First, we have to understand that our suffering was not
meant for us in the beginning of our existence. Nor is it meant for
our end. It came about as consequence of our mishandling our freedom,
that supreme gift God our Father and Creator endowed us with at our
first creation in Adam and Eve.
We have to make that qualification of “first creation,”
because our creation is actually an ongoing affair that is played out
in stages all throughout time.
There’s the first creation by God the Father of Adam and
Eve, endowing us with the best of gifts like our freedom, then our
second creation in Jesus to introduce the crucial correcting element
of the cross in our life once we misuse our freedom, and the third
stage which is our personal sanctification through the work of the
Holy Spirit.
The business of creation takes the whole of time and, in
fact, covers the entirety of our existence, since it involves our very
existence itself. For as long as we exist, our creation continues to
take place.
From the point of view of God who lives in eternity, this
whole process is just but a blink to him. “One day with the Lord is as
a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” (2 Pt 3,8) Of
course, from our point of view, all this process covers the whole of
time.
Back to our freedom, we have to understand that it’s that
gift that makes us image and likeness of God. Together with our
intelligence, it enables us to mirror God’s greatness is us. With
God’s grace, it lets us enter God’s life itself, sharing that divine
life and perfecting our ultimate identity.
We are not mere creatures like the others that come from
God and belong to him, but do not participate in the very intimate
life of God. We are the masterpiece of his creation, charged to be
stewards of the whole of creation.
But all the goodness that our freedom gives us turned sour
when we abused it. As a consequence, the good things are now replaced
with bad things that make us suffer. This is the origin of our
suffering that continues to grow, morph and spread in ways we cannot
account anymore.
Still, God has not abandoned us, and instead has
undertaken a very complicated plan to recover us, sending his Son to
become man and effect our own redemption through the Cross.
With the Cross, he has made the very cause of our downfall
also as the very means of our salvation. The Cross is where sin is
transformed to grace, death to life, darkness to light.
And thus, now with the help of the Holy Spirit, we have to
understand the true value of our cross—all the sufferings we have to
endure in this life. Let’s not waste too much time figuring out why we
suffer and how we can overcome it. These we will always do somehow,
but we should not stop there.
Every suffering we have should be an invitation for us to
go back to Christ, to be converted again, that is, to identify
ourselves with him through the work of the Holy Spirit, so we can
effect in our mortal flesh that very transformation that took place in
Christ, who died and rose from the dead.
This is the challenge we have—how to go beyond mere human
considerations of our suffering so as to savor its ultimate religious
value. We need to develop the skill to escape from the self-focusing
dynamics of suffering that only leads to a dead-end when considered
only humanly, to be able to hitch ourselves with the saving dynamics
of Christ’s suffering.
Are we just contented with complaining and groaning and
moaning when we suffer? Or do we start as soon as we can to enter,
through faith, into the more glorious dimensions that our suffering
offers?
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