Today is the feast of
Our Lady of Sorrows. How fitting that
today some of my ninth grade religion students want to talk about suffering, as
in “If God is good, why does he allow suffering?”
This is a
tough question, but not because it is intellectually difficult. It is easy to demonstrate that suffering often
leads to a greater good: why else would so many people willingly undergo the
sometimes severe discomfort of chemotherapy in order to treat their
cancer? It is also pretty clear that we
may not know the good that comes of it, such as a small child who doesn’t
understand why he’s being punished for running out into the road, or a sick
pet that couldn’t possibly comprehend why she’s being stuck with a hypodermic
needle. It’s simply hard to accept, emotionally, that
a loving God would allow such horrific suffering as some people experience,
particularly suffering at the hands of evil and sadistic fellow men (I suspect
that some of my students have been disturbed by events in the news lately).
Herein
lies the Mystery of Suffering: even when it makes sense, it feels
so wrong. The key lies in that word “mystery”, from the Greek μυστήριον, which
is not something unknowable, but rather something known only through
experience. So it is with suffering: it makes sense when we experience it, and
experience it in the light of faith. As
it happens, I heard Gary Zimak talking about this same topic on the radio this
morning, and picked up this great quote: “God doesn’t give us the Grace to
handle imaginary problems.” He does offer us the Grace to handle problems we
are actually experiencing, as St. Paul tells us (1 Corinthian 10:13), as long
as we turn to him in faith.
The
Christian answer, then is that God is not indifferent to suffering, but his
concern is not expressed by giving us a world without suffering, which could
well be a world without the possibility of real love, but by suffering with us:
that’s why our preeminent image is Christ on the Cross. And not only does he suffer for and with us,
but we can join our suffering to his: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your
sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of
Christ, on behalf of his body, which is the Church” (Colossians 1:24). So, not only does Christ console us in our
suffering, but we can use our own suffering to help others.
Which
brings us to Our Lady of Sorrows. It
struck me just today how some of the joyful mysteries of the Rosary are tied in
to Mary’s Seven Sorrows: the Presentation, the Fourth Joyful Mystery, is also the
occasion of the First of Mary’s Seven Sorrows, when Simeon prophecies that a
sword shall pierce Mary’s heart; the Loss of the Child Jesus in the Temple (the
Third Sorrow) leads to the Finding of Jesus (the Fifth Joyful Mystery). How interesting that we have devotions
centered on the suffering of the Woman whom all generations will call Blessed. She is, after all, the First Disciple and our
Model in the Faith. Certainly, if her
sorrows and suffering can help bring about the eternal Joy of the Resurrection,
ours will not be in vain.
The Seven Sorrows of Mary
1. The
Prophecy of Simeon
2. The
Flight into Egypt
3. The
loss of the Child Jesus in the Temple
4. Mary
meets Jesus on the way to Calvary
5. Jesus
dies on the Cross
6. Mary
receives the Body of Jesus
7. The
burial of Jesus
No comments:
Post a Comment