The sorrow of love

THAT’S when whatever causes us pain, suffering and sorrow is referred and united to the saving passion, death and resurrection of Christ. That sorrow, though always with some bitterness, would also assume the flavor of sweetness, something that is not only bearable but also lovable. It’s a sorrow that is lived in love, enabling us to be willing to suffer out of love. 

 We therefore have to learn how to handle our sorrows well, since in the first place they are unavoidable in our life. We have to develop first of all the proper attitude and the corresponding skills so that our sorrows would not just be purely negative elements in our life. They, in fact, can and should become sources and occasions of many good things. 

 For this to happen, the first thing to do is to develop a spiritual attitude and supernatural outlook in life, based on our faith in God that has to grow stronger everyday. That faith, of course, would give rise to hope and charity that would put meaning and sweetness to whatever pain, suffering and sorrow we can experience in this life. 

 Taking care of the spiritual and supernatural aspects of our life enables us to imitate Christ in being patient and willing to go through all the sacrifices we can meet in our earthly life. It's a patience that is also founded on the truth that all our sorrows and sufferings in life always have some redemptive meaning. 

 Our main problem in this issue of our earthly suffering and sorrow is that our attitude towards this unavoidable element in our life is taken out of its fundamental context of faith and religion. We just look at it in a purely human and natural way. We just look for the human and natural causes as well as for their human and natural solutions or remedies. 

 If we follow the wisdom of our Christian faith, we for sure would lose the fear of suffering and sorrow. In fact, the contrary would take place—we would look for occasions when we can suffer and experience sorrow. 

 If we believe in Christ and follow what he has taught and shown us, we will realize that there is nothing to be afraid of suffering and death, and all the other negative things that can mark our life. 

  He bore them himself and converted them into our way for our own salvation. Yes, even death which is the ultimate evil that can befall on us, an evil that is humanly insoluble. With Christ’s death, the curse of death has been removed. “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” St. Paul said. (1 Cor 15,54-55) 

 So, we just have to be sport and cool about the whole reality of suffering and death. What we need to do is to follow Christ in his attitude toward them. For Christ, embracing suffering and ultimately death, is the expression of his greatest love for us. We have to enter into the dynamic of this divine logic and wisdom so we can lose that fear of suffering and death and instead, convert them into expressions of love. 

 Thus, we have to understand this very well. Unless we love the cross, we can never say that we are loving enough. Of course, we have to qualify that assertion. It’s when we love the cross the way God wills it—the way Christ loves it—that we can really say that we are loving as we should, or loving with the fullness of love. This is when we can experience the sorrow of love.

Only with God…

TO complete the statement, it’s only with God when we can be right and do right. That’s the ideal condition of our life here on earth, and we should just do everything to pursue that goal which would mean our perfection and fulfillment. 

 Our life, whether we are aware of it or not, is a shared life with God. It’s God actually who, as our Creator, is always with us and is directing us toward our perfection through his providence. Ours is simply to follow him. We should be wary of our tendency to think that to affirm our true identity and to live out our true freedom, we should be just be by ourselves. 

 This basic truth about ourselves was somehow expressed by Christ when in his High Priestly Prayer he said, “Holy Father, keep them in your name whom you have given me; that they may be one, as we also are.” (Jn 17,11) 

 We have to learn to refer everything to God, always asking for his guidance so we may know how to follow what he is showing us amid the varying and often confusing conditions and circumstances of our life here on earth. 

 For this, we obviously need to humble ourselves so we would feel the need to go to God asking for guidance always, even if that guidance is always made available to us. We cannot deny that we are notorious for relying simply on our own knowledge and estimation of things as we carry out our tasks, tackle the different challenges and trials, hurdle the barriers that we encounter in life. 

 For us to see how God is guiding us, we definitely need to enliven our spiritual life that should be nourished by a life of prayer, sacrifices, ascetical struggle, recourse to the sacraments, etc. In short, we should have a plan of a life of piety that is kept going and growing by having a lifelong program of formation. 

 This formation should tackle the human, doctrinal, spiritual, professional and apostolic aspects of our Christian life. This formation would greatly help us to punctually discern what God is actually prompting us in every situation of our life. 

 Also helpful in this regard is to have recourse to spiritual direction and accompaniment with someone who can truly guide us. It is a good way of truly recognizing the voice of God and not easily deluded by other voices that can sound like God’s voice but actually are not. 

 These days, we have to be wary of the many imitations around that can mislead us. We need to have recourse to spiritual direction, choosing a good spiritual director who should be a true man of God, because we are poor directors of our own selves. 

 We can easily fall at the mercy of our own weaknesses which we should be humble enough to acknowledge. This is not to mention the many tricks of the devil and the allurements of the world that can imitate God’s voice, offering us sweet poison. 

 Definitely, to be able to discern and follow God’s continuing guidance over us, we need to practice restraint and moderation in our speech, sleep, idle mirth, etc. In other words, we should try to live as spiritual men, not just carnal men. 

 We should always remember that our life is not just lived in the level of the physical and material dimensions. It is not even lived in the social level in all its aspects—economic, political, historical, etc. 

 Our life has a prominently spiritual dimension that requires us to nourish the way we think, judge, reason and ultimately to love. These are the functions of our spiritual soul. It’s in this dimension that the supernatural aspect of our life enters.

Insist and persist in prayer

WHENEVER we find ourselves in some helpless situation due to a persistent weakness—like the weakness of the flesh—or to some challenges and trials that are increasingly getting heavier each day, or to some misfortune that we find impossible to bear, then we should just insist on praying and begging our Lord for help. 

 While it’s true that we should also be accepting of whatever fate would come our way, no matter how trying, we have no reason to think that we can and should stop bothering God for the relief that we need. 

 We should rather act like that Syrophoenician woman who displayed a persistent and humble faith while asking Christ to cast a demon out of her daughter. (cfr. Mk 7,24-30) Despite initial rebuffs based on her nationality, she won Christ’s admiration by arguing that “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs,” resulting in her daughter’s instant healing. 

 That is why it is important that we always think and act according to our faith, more than just our feelings or our own natural and human estimation of things. It is faith that gives us the global picture of things. It manages to give us the real and redemptive meaning to any situation in our life. 

 It is our faith that reassures us that we are never alone, that we are never left abandoned to fend for ourselves against anything that can take place in life. Like that sick man at the poolside of Bethesda, lying there for 38 years, waiting for his lucky turn, (cfr. Jn 5,1-15) we should remain hopeful that not everything is lost. 

 God will always intervene in our life. He is a good father to us, ever merciful and compassionate, slow to anger, quick to forgive. We might be a misbehaving child, but he always looks first at our being his child before he does something with our misdeeds. 

 It might be good to always relish this psalm that reassures us of the goodness of God in spite of our mistakes: “For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may last for the night, but a shout of joy comes in the morning.” (30,5) 

 Our problem is that we many times choose to be guided by our own feelings and private thoughts, detached from our faith. And so, we plunge into fear and shame, sadness and depression, and we suffer unnecessarily. Rather, let’s just be insistent and persevering in our prayer. 

And if God seems to ignore us, we have to realize that he is simply testing us for a number of reasons—to strengthen our faith, to purify our intentions, to grow in the other virtues, etc. But to be sure, God is never indifferent to our needs. He is always solicitous. He even knows more of our needs than we do, and makes provision for them. It’s rather us who do not notice what God is giving and doing for us most of the time. 

 Obviously, for our prayer to be insistent and persevering in spite of what may appear as God’s initial indifference to our requests, we need to spend some moments of special and serious conversation with him, like some period of mental prayer, meditating on God’s word, having recourse to the sacraments, etc. These are like the refueling process that helps us to continue going on with our spiritual life. 

 The important thing to remember is that we should never give up on our prayer. Rather, let us always sharpen our dispositions for prayer.