Suffering

                                 

“Lord, You know the burden of my sorrow.”  God is faithful and God can be trusted!  Do you believe that?  St. Teresa of Jesus prayed:

“Let nothing trouble you/

Let nothing frighten you

Everything passes/

            God never changes

Patience/ Obtains all

Whoever has God/

            Wants for nothing

God alone is enough.”

In the General Introduction to the Order of Christian Funerals, # 8, “If one member suffers in the body of Christ which is the Church, all the members suffer with that member.”  (1 Cor. 12:26)

For this reason, those who are baptized into Christ and nourished at the same table of the Lord are responsible for one another.  When Christians are sick, their brothers and sisters share a ministry of mutually charity and “do all that they can to help the sick return to health by showing love for the sick, and by celebrating the sacraments with them.”  So too, when a member of Christ’s Body dies, the faithful are called to a ministry of consolation to those who have suffered the loss of one who they love.  Christian consolation is rooted in that hope that comes from faith in the saving death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ….  The Church calls each member of Christ’s Body—priest, deacon, laity—to participate in the ministry of consolation: to care for the dying to pray for the dead, to comfort those who mourn.

Why do we Pray and why is there Suffering?

 

I sent this response to someone who wrote me about suffering and prayer.

Dear_____,

Thank you for your questions, which I think, can be summed up in two. 

1. Why do people suffer, and 2. Why do we pray?

These may appear to be simple questions on the surface, but they are quite profound.  The first thing you want to consider is why you pray?

Do you pray to get what you want?

Do you pray to know what God wants?  

Do you pray to build and strengthen your relationship with God?

I suggest the primary purpose of praying should be to build and strengthen your relationship with God, so you can discover His will for your life and follow it. 

The question about suffering is at its essence a mystery; we can know something about suffering, but not the entire picture. 

A Bishop in Ireland asked a question at Confirmation about the Trinity.  A young lad responded the Trinity is 3 in 1 and 1 in 3.  The Bishop said to him, “I don’t understand” The young lad said, “You not supposed to, it’s a mystery!” 

The best explanation I have found for why we suffer is a story about a Rabbi teaching his students about 400 years before Christ.  He was teaching 4 or 5 of his students just outside their village.  As they looked down on their village, they saw foreign troops invading the village.

They heard the screaming, the yelling and saw the fires.  Finally, the rabbi looked up to heaven and screamed, “If only I were God!”  One of his students asked him, “What would you do differently if you were God.”

The rabbi answered, “I would do nothing differently, but I would understand!”

We don’t understand why there is pain and suffering in the world, but Jesus taught us what to do with our pain and suffering.  Offer it to God, the Father and ask Him to bless it and have good come from it.  It is what we do with our suffering that helps us grow or stumble on our road here.

 

Let me share excerpts from Psalm 18, “I love you, Lord, my strength, my rock, my fortress, my savior.  My God is the rock where I take refuge; my shield, my mighty help, my stronghold.” 

 

St. Francis de Sales gave us this insight, “Let God gather what He has planted in His garden, He takes nothing out of season.”  In God’s season, we find our ultimate hope!  That is the land of the living.

St. Francis de Sales taught us, “Do not look forward to the changes and chances of this life with fear; rather look upon them with strong hope that, as they arise, God, whose child you are, will deliver you from them.”  Begin each day TRUSTING in God, live each moment in that TRUST, and allow

TRUSTING God’s WILL to RUN your life and then you will live as a child of God.  Easy to write, easy to say, but very hard to live.

 

St. Joseph pray for us.

St. Andre Bessette intercede for us.

May God Be Praised!