Why do we suffer?

THE quick and short answer to that question is because we

are not with God, from whom all good things come. We prefer to be on

our own, even to make ourselves our own God. Of course, separated from

God, from whom, to repeat, all good things come, the only thing that

can happen to us is to suffer.

  

          Not only do we suffer, but we neither cannot help but also

die, which is a consequence of our sin, a contradiction to what being

with God, who is life eternal, would entitle us. With God, we can only

have joy, bliss and everything that is good. Without him, we can only

have the opposite.

   

          Suffering is not intended for us in the beginning, nor in

the end, in our final state of life in heaven. But we brought

suffering to ourselves by disobeying God, by daring to separate

ourselves from God. That’s why, we suffer now. We cannot avoid it

anymore.

  

          Remember that our first parents, still in the state of

original justice, did not know any suffering or pain. They were meant

to be immortal, to enjoy what is known as impassibility (the capacity

not to suffer any pain, even tiredness) and integrity, the state of

being in harmony with their own selves and with everything else.

  

          But all that was lost because they disobeyed God’s

commandment to them and preferred to do their own will. They preferred

to separate themselves from God, thinking that they can be their own

God. That was the seemingly irresistible temptation the devil, the

father of all lies, hoisted on them.

  

          But in spite of all that, God continues to love us. He is

such a father to us that even our sins and our stupidities would make

him love us some more. This he did by sending his Son to us to save

us. Let’s try to imagine what all this divine endeavor would involve.

  

          The Son had to become man to tackle the whole problem of our

sinfulness that unavoidably leads us to suffering and eventually to

death. We can just imagine the kind of “suffering” God had to undergo

to save us!

  

          In the words of St. Paul, the Son of God emptied himself to

become man, and he emptied himself further by suffering death for our

sake, and death on the cross. Let us try to go through his passion and

death to have a good idea of what Christ our redeemer had to undergo

to save us.

  

          The suffering and death of Christ which was the price, the

ransom for our redemption, is the paradigm we have to follow to heal

ourselves of our strong tendency to be by own selves alone, daring to

separate ourselves from God. Christ has converted suffering and death

into a means to our salvation.

   

          This time, our suffering as long as it is united to the

suffering of Christ, becomes the cure that heals us of our fundamental

infirmity to separate ourselves from God. Our suffering now can have a

redemptive value. It is something that we should welcome and even look

for. Without suffering, we cannot help but stay away from God.

  

          That is why not only do we suffer now, which is unavoidable,

but we also have to suffer, to look for it, because only through

suffering can we be reconciled with God, from whom we come and to whom

we belong in a most intimate way since God wants us to be his image

and likeness, to be children of his.

   

          We need to readjust our understanding of suffering to

conform it to how Christ wants our suffering to be. Every suffering we

experience in this life should be an invitation to “deny ourselves,”

to empty ourselves, so we can be with God, and in fact, be “another

Christ,” who is the pattern of our humanity, the savior of our damaged

humanity.

Discerning the spirit

WE should be experts in discerning the spirit that animates

us. Our life principle is our soul which is spiritual. As such, we

need to know the kind of spirit that animates our soul that in turn

animates our whole life.

  

          We have to realize that there are many kinds of spirits

roaming around the world, and we have to learn how to discern them.

There is the spirit of God, the spirit of Christ as opposed to the

antichrist. There is also the evil spirit, and the spirit of the world

that is dominated by the evil one, and the spirit of the flesh.

  

           St. John was explicit as to which spirit is proper to us.

“By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that

Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which

does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of

antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming, and now it is in

the world already.” (1 Jn 4,2-3)

  

          St. Paul distinguished between the fruits of the Spirit of

God and the works of the flesh dominated by the evil spirit. The

former include love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,

faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. (cfr Gal 5,22-23)

  

          The latter include fornication, impurity, licentiousness,

idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness,

dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing. (cfr Gal

5,19-21)

  

          We would somehow know the kind of spirit we have by the kind

of thoughts, desires and loves we have. If we look more closely at how

our consciousness works, what its usual contents are, what we are most

aware of, we would have an idea of the kind of spirit we have. All we

have to do is to see if our thoughts, desires and loves are those of

the fruits of the spirit or the fruits of the flesh.

   

          This is also true when we examine the kind of dreams we have

in our sleep where we are supposed to be unconscious. Our state of

unconsciousness is when we disengage ourselves for a while from our

bodily mechanisms, but it is in that state where our spirit takes

over, so to speak. In a sense, it’s when we are unconscious that the

kind of spirit we have can be known.

  

          We know, of course, that with our wounded, sinful human

condition at present, our spirit is not yet totally that of the spirit

of God. In fact, it may somehow be dominated by the spirit of the

flesh, of the world, if not, God forbid, of the devil itself.

  

          That is why we need to struggle. The ascetical struggle is a

constant feature in our earthly life which will always be an arena

between the forces of good and evil. We have to get used to this fact

of life and train ourselves adequately for it.

  

          To be sure, God will always be on our side. Even if we are

lost, God will always seek us out, as dramatized in those parables of

the lost sheep, the lost coin and the prodigal son. We just have to

try our best to correspond to God’s constant interventions and

solicitude over us.

  

          The important thing to remember is that we should try our

best that the spirit that should animate us is the spirit of God, and

not any other spirit. We cannot therefore underestimate the need for

us to be always on guard. Let’s remember that we are favorite targets

of the enemies of God since we have been created in his image and

likeness.

  

          It would be good if we are transparent about this business

of identifying the kind of spirit we have at the moment. Through

constant examinations of conscience, through spiritual direction and

other spiritual means, we would know the kind of spirit we have.

Directing our consciousness

WE have to give due attention—and care—to our sense of

consciousness. We should not just allow it to flow in any way. We need

to direct it, we need to shape it, we need to fill it with something

that should be appropriate to us as persons and as children of God.

  

          We cannot allow our consciousness to be empty and passive,

simply waiting for things to happen. We cannot allow our consciousness

to be simply at the mercy of our bodily and worldly conditions. It has

to transcend this dimension of our life, using of course our spiritual

faculties of intelligence and will, and always asking for the grace of

God.

  

          In fact, the ideal is that our consciousness should always

be engaged and excited, animated and stimulated by something that

sparks it into the dynamic of love.

  

          We should not allow our consciousness to be bored or

languishing in a state of ennui. As much as possible, it has to be

active all the time. Resting, as when we go to sleep, or when we fall

unconscious due to sickness, is not actually knocking off our

consciousness.

  

          It is bringing it to another state where the mind disengages

itself for a while from the bodily mechanisms and the physical world,

but still maintains its contact with its life source—our spiritual

soul, which properly speaking should be animated by the spirit of God

and not just any spirit.

  

          As articulated by St. Augustine, our usual problem is that

while God is always with us, we are not always with him, in the sense

that we tend to ignore him. We can never be without God. Our life is

not simply a product of all the biological, physical, social elements.

It is first of all maintained and supported by God, its creator, and

that is for always.

   

          Let us remember that in our most ideal and ultimate state of

life where we are supposed to be face to face with God, the only thing

that will function in us will be our consciousness. Everything else

will be kind of sublimated into it. Our bodily functions, while

remaining physical and material, will be spiritualized.

  

          This, of course, is difficult to imagine. That is why we

have been warned that “eyes have not seen, nor ears heard, what God

has prepared for those who love him,” referring precisely to how

things will be in our ultimate state of life.

  

          But we can get some idea of this spiritualized body when we

consider the resurrected Christ, our way, truth and life, the pattern

of our humanity and the savior of our damaged humanity. The

resurrected Christ had a body as attested to by the testimony of St.

Thomas the doubter. But in one of the appearances of Christ before his

apostles, his body managed to enter the room even without opening the

door.

  

          We need to realize that the proper state of our

consciousness is when it has God as its primary object of awareness.

Otherwise, it will be looking for something else, or failing in that,

it will just be languishing and putting itself at the mercy of

whatever would excite it, and these will just be worldly things.

  

          Obviously, to be always aware of God in our consciousness

would require the grace of faith that is actually given to us in

abundance. We just have to correspond to that grace by making many

acts of faith, hope and charity. These little ejaculatory prayers are

like little pieces of fuel that will keep our presence of God from

dying. They in fact help in making for a big bonfire of presence of

God all throughout the day.

  

          It’s about time that we examine more deeply how our sense of

consciousness is and do something about it to conform it to its proper

state.