January 10
"Sin makes men accomplices of one another and causes concupiscence, violence, and injustice to reign among them."
-Catechism of the Catholic Church 1869
Today's Reflection:
Each person who sins cooperates in bringing suffering to the world. To what extent do you give in to temptation and sin?
"Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe." John 20:25
“Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident."--Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli's Mandolin
"You will never be happy if your happiness depends on getting solely what you want. Change the focus. Get a new center. Will what God wills. and your joy no man shall take from you." -Venerable Fulton Sheen
April 29
Feast of St. Catherine of Siena, Virgin and Doctor (1347 – 1380)
“You asked for suffering…You were, in effect, asking for love and light and knowledge of the truth. For suffering and sorrow increase in proportion to love” When love grows, so does sorrow … Endure courageously, then.
From The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena
April 26
“Our Lord and Savior lifted up his voice and said with incomparable majesty: ‘Let all men know that grace comes after tribulation. Let them know that without the burden of afflictions it is impossible to reach the height of grace. Let them know that the gifts of grace increase as the struggles increase.’”
-- St. Rose of Lima
February 7
“Suffering borne in the will quietly and patiently is a continual, very powerful prayer before God.”--St. Jane Frances de Chantal
aiah 23: "Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed." Really hear these words "By his stripes we are healed." Jesus bore all of your affliction, all of your sorrow, all of your suffering. But not just to make it through, but to experience joy even in the midst of your grief, your sadness, you suffering.
Love Wins The Day
So, what happens here? Love wins the day. And what is the expression of that love? Suffering is the means that expresses it. John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world that He sent His only Son that everyone who believed in Him might not perish but have life everlasting." By investing divine life into the void of evil, God makes suffering a suitable instrument out of which He can work the greatest good - the salvation of mankind. Thus, God gives suffering a new purpose, a new value, a supernatural dimension through which great good can be worked in the world.
It is our baptism in Christ Jesus that makes this possible. Through our baptism we are incorporated into the paschal mystery. And what is the paschal mystery? It is the passion, death, and resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Our baptismal grace is our entrance into this mystery of salvation and all the wonders it contains -- including the capacity of our sufferings to be united to those of Christ and be used by Him for great good. Every suffering then, holds the promise of transformation if we will but unite it to the passion of Christ.
And herein lies the secret that all the great saints knew, a secret revealed to them in the depths of their own sufferings, pains, torments, and trials: that in the midst of the greatest difficulty, the greatest injustice, the greatest travail, we can suffer with Christ in His passion and work with Him to bring salvation to souls - our soul and the souls of others.
Now do we see the great gift given to us in every contradiction and trial. Now do we see the pearl of great price hidden in the horrid and ugly. Now do we see the shimmering grace veiled by the painful and sorrowful?
I have personally suffered great losses in my life. But in every case, I have seen the magnificent glory that can be ours when we seek to discover the joy that sometimes comes packaged in the dark garments of suffering. However, we must be receptive. We must be open. We must be willing to mine that treasury of grace waiting for us in the suffering. One of the greatest treasures is our own purification. In Zechariah13:9 we read: "I will bring one third through fire, and I will purify them as silver is refined, and I will test them as gold is tested. They shall call upon my name, and I will hear them. I will say, 'they are my people," and they will say, "The Lord is my God."
God wants to purify us of all that holds us back from him, all that hinders our progress on the way to sanctification and holiness. He wants to remove the alloy of our lives that we might be that fire tried gold, made resilient in him and through him. Shining and gleaming with his glory. And one of the ways this takes place is by embracing the sufferings and trials we experience and permitting God to work in them and through them for our betterment and purification.
We are all going to suffer. The broken and fallen world in which we live assures us of that. But how we suffer, what we do with the suffering, that is what makes the difference. The great saints used their sufferings as a means of purgation and purification. Not waiting for the fires of purgatory to have their affect, they embraced the crosses entrusted to them and cooperated with grace to work out that process in this life. That is why the great saints rejoiced in suffering and regarded the greatest cross to be no cross at all.
Is it possible for us to adopt this vision of our own sufferings and trials? Could it be that God is permitting the wound of heart to remain so that we can come to this recognition and see the great gift that lies underneath this wrapping of travail? Can we, seek to acquire this supernatural vision?
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