What a big pity if…

INDEED, we have to admit that we practically are all

cowering in fear and anxiety, and suffering from all kinds of

privations, physical, mental and emotional, all arising from this

pandemic that we are having these days. But it would be a big pity if

in all these conditions we fail to take advantage of the golden

opportunity these conditions are actually offering us.

            If we are guided by our Christian faith, we know that we

are not meant only to suffer and then die. We are meant for joy and

bliss and life everlasting. But our suffering and death possess great

value that can do us a lot of good.

            If we have learned well from Christ’s life and example,

then we would know that our suffering and death can be our best and

ultimate expression of our love for God and for everybody else,

because Christ has made all human suffering precisely as the supreme

manifestation of love and as the ultimate means for our salvation.

            Remember Christ saying, “Greater love has no man that

this: that a man lays down his life for his friends.” (Jn 15,13) That

would be pure love, fully gratuitous, with no strings attached. And

it’s a love that is motivated by no less than the greatest need of

man: our own salvation, the full recovery of our dignity as children

of God.

            If we can only have the same attitude that Christ had in

accepting his passion and death as we go through our current rigmarole

of lockdown, quarantine and all that stuff, then we would be turning

our imposed sacrifices into something very positive, helpful and

constructive.

            No, we are not meant to suffer, and suffering is not God’s

will for us. Our suffering is always self-inflicted which God allows

to happen because he respects our freedom, no matter how much we abuse

it.

            But God knows how to turn our suffering and death around.

In Christ, we have been given the way of how to reverse the purely

negative character of our suffering and death into something positive

and redemptive.

            That is why we have to learn how to love suffering, not in

the perverted and masochistic sense, but in the way Christ accepted

his passion and death. He did no run away from it when the time came

for him to go through it. He presented himself, in fact, and embraced

all that suffering and death quietly in obedience to the will of the

Father for the salvation of man.

            Let’s remember that it is our sin that has brought our own

suffering and death. And it’s a sin that would require God himself

with our cooperation for it to be forgiven. Why? Because it is God

whom we have offended, and we on our own cannot undo it. It would need

God himself becoming man to undo it. By so doing, we have the way to

be forgiven of our sin.

            When we would finally be able to accept and live this

truth of our faith, then we would not be afraid of any suffering that

will befall us in our earthly life. In fact, we would welcome and

embrace suffering, convinced that we would be enriched and glorified

by it. We would be convinced that by embracing suffering we would be

tightening our identification with Christ, and would be showing the

greatest love we can ever have.

            Yes, love is proven more genuine and more Christ-inspired

if developed, lived and shown in the crucible of suffering. A love

that only thrives on good times is not an authentic love. It has to

have the form of the cross for it to be authentic.

            So, we can say that our present condition is actually an

invitation for us to mature in our humanity and in our Christian life.