Teaching Event
Presented by Deacon Cory Ford
Deacon Cory Ford will host a teaching event where he will help us understand what the Mass is and why we do what we do.  Join us  for this two-part class in church on September 7 & 14 at 7:00 PM.
Please use the link below to RSVP so Deacon Cory can have an idea of how many people will attend.
 
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/508054CACAB2AA0F94-deacon

There is a story of a man who once desperately wanted to be a priest.  He had discerned for years the call to priesthood and spent many years studying to be a priest in the seminary.  He enjoyed everything about the seminary, but there was just one roadblock for him, poor health.  This man was healthy his whole life up to seminary, but he was constantly accosted by health concerns.  In his first year, he suffered severe stomach pain.  This would prove to be a long lasting health issue for this man.  After a few years, he seemed to be done with his stomach pain, he ended up in the hospital with a mysterious crushed lung with no explanation.  These were two serious health concerns that made him doubt that he could keep going, but he prayed and managed to keep studying.

Less than two years later, this man was diagnosed with stage III cancer.  This time, he was unable to remain in seminary.  The cancer treatment was too difficult to continue the seminary work while undergoing treatment.  For just over a year, this man was stuck at home with nothing else to do.  He was fed up with constantly being faced with hurdles to finishing seminary and this was his chance to just quit.  But fortunately, throughout the next few months, he spent many hours in prayer, staring at the crucifix on the wall.  His prayer gradually shifted from “why did you do this, God” to “Thank you for this God.”  You see, this man had realized that God was not punishing him, but teaching him.  This man returned to the seminary and was determined to use his experience of suffering to enhance his ministry and bring others closer to God.  His ministerial abilities increased and he was eventually ordained.  You see, this man recognized that suffering was nothing more than God’s invitation to grow closer to Him.  And that is what I aim to talk about today.

In my opinion, the most common question I have heard in my ministry so far goes something like this, “why do bad things happen to good people?”  I will not ask if you have asked this question before, because I know that we all have, because our human nature forces us to.  So I will ask you, when was the last time you said this to yourself in one way or another.  Suffering is almost incompatible with the human person because we were made for the good.  So why do we suffer if it goes against our nature?
To understand this comlex question we must look at the history of suffering.  Suffering begins at the fall of our first parents.  After Adam and Eve ate the fruit, God tells them, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing” and “in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life.”(Gen. 3:16-17)  From that moment on, suffering entered the world, and as St. John Paul II puts it, is an “intangible mystery.”  So, by understanding that suffering entered the world through a human act, we cannot say that God is sending us suffering, rather, we are reaping what we have sowed.

Suffering is inescapable, even Jesus himself, in his authentic human experience, had to suffer.  Jesus himself says today, “The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”(Lk. 9:22)  Through his sufferings, Jesus, as he has many times before, will be the example of how we are to live.  To explore this theme, we will look to the words of Saint John Paul II in his wonderful Apostolic Letter Salvifici Doloris, who called the bible, “a great book about suffering.” (SD, 6)

He [JPII] describes suffering as what happens when we encounter evil. (SD, 7)  This is a far cry from the ancient idea that we are punished because we did something, like how the people in the book of Job do at his misfortunes. People have always believed suffering is a result of a sin or because they angered God, but that is far from the truth.  God allows us to suffer so that we can enter into an experience of His divine love. (SD, 13)  Let me explain.  

One of the most famous bible verses is Jn. 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” God has a single goal for us, to have eternal life.  In order to merit eternal life, we must remain as close to Him as possible.  That is Jesus’ perpetual mission, to save us and bring us into eternal life.  If you could help in this mission, wouldn’t you?  You can!  You see, by becoming man, Jesus has given us a way to grow close to the Father, through him.  So by uniting our lives to his, we are able to bring a whole new dimension to our suffering, a salvific one.

This requires a deeper explanation.  To begin, can we all agree that when Jesus suffered and died, it was a bad moment, yes?  Was it also not the greatest moment in human history, yes?  Jesus, at the very moment of his death, redeemed the human race.  St. John Paul II tells us that “In the Cross of Christ not only is the Redemption accomplished through suffering, but also human suffering itself has been redeemed.”(SD, 19)

This idea is the greatest power of God!  He takes the most evil things in the world and makes them the greatest good.  Just as God made Jesus’ ultimate suffering the greatest good, so God makes our suffering good.  This is where we get the idea of redemptive suffering.  When we unite our suffering to Jesus’ suffering, it is brought to the Father to be made good.  In a sense, we walk with Jesus with our own cross to be glorified just as his was.

So far, I have brought you the message of the goodness that can come from suffering.  But all of these good effects cannot change one thing.  It cannot make suffering easy. Going back to St. John Paul II, he writes, “Suffering, in fact, is always a trial—at times a very hard one—to which humanity is subjected.”(SD, 23)  I don’t expect anyone to leave today and create suffering for themselves.  Rather, I hope this message is one that you can reflect on when suffering eventually comes to you.  Facing suffering in a positive, redemptive way is a saintly act.  It is truly an advanced stage of personal spiritual journey.(SD, 24)  you cannot choose how or when you will face suffering, but you can choose how to react to that suffering.

In our own trials we will experience, we can choose to let our suffering separate us from God, or we can let it bring us closer to him.  St. Paul is the most famous example of this.  There are dozens of examples in his writings of the sufferings he endured.  St. Paul was beaten, imprisoned, and eventually killed for his faith.  Instead of suffering pulling St. Paul away from God, he used to bring not only himself, but others closer to Christ as well.  We have this ability too, the ability to change our suffering to joy and to move the hearts and minds of those we meet to Christ.  Because when others see joy instead of suffering, they will be drawn to the source of that joy, Jesus Christ.

Moving away from the more technical aspect of suffering that I have spoken about so far, let me move to give some practical advice about how to deal with suffering.  One key aspect of suffering I can share is that our perception will shape our reality.  I was recently told a story by a wise man that reflects this point perfectly.  

There were two men sharing a prison cell.  One day they both go and look outside of the window of the cell.  The first one looks out, sees the yard overgrown with weeds, a deflated basketball, and cigarette butts all over the place and thinks to himself, what a terrible place.  Later on, the second man in the cell comes out, looks up at the sky, and sees a wonderful sunset and colors in the sky and says, “what a beautiful day.”

You see, the first man focused on the worst part of his life and could not stand it, while the second man was drawn out by the beauty of his life.  Same place, two very different realities.  Our suffering can be the same way.  We can either choose to look at the worst parts, or find the good parts of our lives that make life worth living.

Fortunately, all our suffering will come to an end eventually.  There will one day be a time where the pain will cease and we will no longer suffer in our life.  That is an invitation to a whole new life.  The end of suffering is the beginning of meeting others in their suffering.  Once you experience something, you begin to recognize it out in the world, you become sensitive to it.  Think about it, when a person goes to med school, they are more aware of medical issues in others, or when someone becomes a certified repairman (cars, acs, plumbers) they notice things others wouldn’t.

Suffering opens us up in a similar way, it gives us a sensitivity to the suffering of others.  After we suffer, we become aware of the suffering of others.  Take, for example, a broken leg.  If you break your leg and do two months of recovery, the next time you meet someone with a broken leg, you are willing to help them since you understand the struggle.  This is more true for more advanced suffering.  Take the man studying to become a priest.  After he had cancer, he would go and meet cancer patients in his ministry because he was able to meet them where they were at.  He was able to understand them in a way others could not.

I relate this ability of meeting someone in their suffering to Simon of Cyrene in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  Simon of Cyrene was the man, who in the Gospel, helped carry Jesus’ cross for him.  Jesus was in the midst of his greatest suffering, and he could no longer carry the burden of his suffering and needed relief from his cross.  Simon was forced against his will to carry this burden because it needed to be done.  This allowed Jesus to endure his suffering long enough to bring his suffering to completion, allowing God to glorify his suffering and make it life-giving.  We are called to be Simon of Cyrene to others.

Through our own suffering we are made strong enough to carry others’ crosses so no one must suffer alone.  This is the reality of suffering, we never have to be alone.  Jesus suffered with Mary, the saints suffered with others in their lives and we suffer with each other now.  Never be afraid to call upon another person, or the saints, or the blessed mother, or Christ himself when the cross becomes too heavy for you to continue.  Because together, we will get our cross to Christ to glorify our sufferings and turn them to joy.

In the beginning of this homily I reflected on the question frequently asked, “Why do good people suffer?”  Now we have the answer.  Suffering happens because we encounter evil which we then allow God to make good through the cross of Jesus.  My brothers and sisters, I spoke of a man who used his sufferings in the seminary to help him become a better minister.  This was not a made-up story to help make a point, but rather a truth that stands before you today.  It was my seminary experience and health issues which allowed God to make my suffering an opportunity for others.  There have been countless others who have done the same, we call them saints.  So let us all live out our call to be saints from Christ, and allow our suffering to be a bridge to Christ and never an obstacle for us or others.  My brothers and sisters may your suffering, and the suffering of all people, in union with the Cross of Christ be victorious over sin and death! Amen!