Is the Cross the end? power of sufference

Manila retreat 16

Up to the Cross: The suffering and the purification

St Paul says to Timothy (2 Tim 3:10-13) “Now you have observed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and suffering the things that happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. What persecutions I endured! Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. Indeed, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. But wicked people and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving others and being deceived.”

During the Holy Week we reflect on the mystery of Christ’s suffering and death. It must be clear for us the fact that the death of Christ on the cross was not an accident or a mistake. Jesus could have chosen a road of glory and success, instead he decided to choose the condition of the poorest, the persecuted, and lived and died like them. This choice not only gave hope to all who suffer, but gave value to sufferance itself. In Mt 5 we have two Beatitudes which speak more directly about this: Blessed those who mourn (5:4); blessed those who are persecuted for righteousness (5:10). Of course there is also the conclusion of the beatitudes which, speaking more directly says: “blessed are you when people persecute you, etc.” (5:11) In the first there is the statement: “because God will console you”. This gives the hope for the solution of the problems. The second one, instead does not say that God will solve the problem, or prevent people from hurting you or killing you, and doesn’t say that he will revenge you. The beatitude is in the suffering itself because it becomes the way to ensure the kingdom of Heaven. As he saved the world through his sufferance, so our suffering, in many occasions, can contribute to the salvation of the world, and of course of ourselves.

The word “mourning” in the beatitude should not be misunderstood as complaining or as something passive, something preventing us from acting. The meaning of the bible is actually the opposite. The bible is full of mourners. Ez 27 the people mourn because the city is full of bad persons, but these mourners make penance and fasting and will be the only saved. Mary at the feet of the cross is mourning and her mourning changes into com-passion and so unites her with God in his plan of salvation. So this mourning has to be interpreted as suffering with those who suffer unjustly. We have to unite this beatitude with the 8^th: blessed those who are persecuted for righteousness. We need an active mourning which is not conformity with evil. The world would like a sadness which numbs our conscience, and if we react to it, they persecute us. To take the stand of the poor and the rejected is to take the stand against the structures of sin which created those poverty and rejection.

We spoke already a lot about apostolate and the humble way to do it. Now I want to concentrate a bit more on sufferance itself.

There are different kinds of sufferance: some are physical, some are psychological or emotional or moral. Some are due to our mistakes, some to the wrong doing of someone else without any participation of ours. Some can be avoided, others cannot. Some seem useful like when we work hard to achieve a goal, other useless like when we have a headache. Some have a hope in front other present no hope like an incurable disease. Since they are different, they will have a different impact on us, but what makes really the difference is our attitude towards them.

There is a beautiful movie which can show us what I mean: Its title is of Gods and Men. It speaks about the life of a group of Trappist monks who lived in a Muslim village in Algeria. They were well loved and respected by the local population, but in the country the fundamentalists started killing and burning and so these monks, who were all French, became a possible target. After a first threatening visit to the monastery by the terrorists, the community had to decide if they were to leave and go back to France safe or stay there facing the ever growing possibility of death. Of course the local people wanted them to stay. After a lot of prayer and discernment they all decided to stay. The superior had this beautiful explanation: “We continue our activity here among this people, we do not look for death, and as much as possible we will try to avoid it, but if it will come we will accept it in the name of the Lord”. Eventually the terrorists took them all as hostages and killed them. What we look for in our apostolate is not the suffering or the persecution, but the consistency of our life and our witness. This will call for sufferance, and then we accept it, try to solve what is possible, offer with faith what is impossible.

1. It teaches us faith and trust in Providence: God will not abandon us. Think again about efficiency. Everything should be ok, perfect functioning, giving good results. A defeat or a situation in which we feel not able to cope with, will remind us the purpose for which we are here and also the fact that he is the only Saviour and we are here for him, and his ways are not like our ways.
2. It makes us understand better the mystery of Christ and his love for humanity; Of Jesus himself the letter to the Hebrew says: “Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered” (5:8). Most of the founders in history had great devotion for the spirituality of the cross. In today’s society, especially in the western society, there is a strong movement of people who want to get rid of the cross. No crosses in schools or public places. They claim it is in the name of freedom of conscience and religion, respect for those who do not believe. It is not just that, there is much more. I lived near to a hindu temple, and it didn’t take away my freedom. If that applies to religion it should apply to any product which we may not like. It is a fact that the cross reminds them of weakness, defeat, death. Modern society is a society of success, victory, power, self affirmation, the opposite of what the cross of Jesus preaches about.
3. It makes us understand better the sufferance of other people and so it teaches us compassion. Often when a poor person knocks at our door, we feel disturbed, interiorly we criticize him for not working, for drinking, for being dirty and not taking care of himself, for being rude or cheating etc. They are all ways of justifying our bad feelings and the fact that we do not want to help. When we find ourselves in situation of need we start seeing things in a different way, from a different point of view and become less critic, more understanding.
4. Sufferance is necessary to strengthen us. There is nothing in life that comes cheap. Whatever is precious needs hard work to be achieved and hard work brings along physical pain as well as the pain of having to give up other things. There was once a boy who observed a cocoon cracking and the young butterfly coming out. It was struggling pushing with its shoulders to break the cocoon and make space to come out. The boy felt pity and in order to help the butterfly broke the cocoon so the butterfly came out easily. When the day passed, the other butterflies started flying, this one could not. The boy was disappointed. What had happened is that the struggle to break the cocoon with their shoulders is not only for the sake of coming out but is a first exercise that strengthens the shoulders so that when he starts flying they can bear the strain of the flapping. That particular butterfly lacked that strength. Who has everything easy in life will fall at the first small difficulty. People who have never been sick in life not necessarily live longer. Sometimes a simple flu can kill them because they never built up the antibodies.
5. It helps us to appreciate many things in our life, which otherwise we give for granted, and be grateful for them. Think about life, health, a good house, the possibility of studying, friendship, etc. They are great treasures indeed but often we come to know that only when they are not there anymore.
6. When accepted in a positive way, sufferance makes us discover so many qualities and potentialities we have inside and which we were not aware of. Sometimes I happened to visit houses for street children: it is amazing to see how skillful they are, how smart, intelligent and able to come out of any situation. Sometimes our seminarians, who are well protected and for whom everything is readymade, they do not know how to accomplish even the simplest task we entrust to them, without coming and asking for explanations ten times. An interesting fact is that at the beginning the Christians were staying among the Jews only. It was because of the persecutions that they had the need to escape from Israel and go all over the world, carrying with them also the “Word”. Now not only Israel is becoming Christian, but the whole world is becoming so, and this due to the persecutions, not due to power.
7. It is necessary to keep us humble: when we feel weak or in danger we learn that we need somebody else’s help. You know that pride is one of the biggest enemy of our life and also of community life. It is good that sometimes we are forced to ask the help of others. Jesus, while carrying the cross to Calvary falls and needs to allow somebody else to help him. He must have felt humiliated, ashamed to have forced poor Simon to undergo such struggle. My mother is not a proud person but in her life has always worked hard, and still does. She managed a big family and still found time to spend helping others. The only thing is that she never had to ask anybody for help because she acquired so many skills. Now she is 81 and still is always in movement from morning at 5 till evening. A few years ago she fell and broke her ankle. Doctors had to apply plaster and told her to avoid putting down the leg for forty days. She never complained for pain but the thing she found very difficult to accept was to have to depend on somebody else, or as she would put it “to be served”. It was a needed and beneficial experience.
8. It sets an example for many Christians who approach us. If you notice in every nation , at the beginning of Christianity there are martyrs and they are honoured and are the strong foundations of those churches.

Sufferance is a way of purification. We promised our whole life to the Lord, but there are so many parts of it that we haven’t surrendered yet. I would like to present a four level purification that sometimes the Lord imposes on us through our apostolate.

1. Purification from attachment to material things: when we lose something, we learn how to let go the things which are not really important and concentrate on those who are essential. This is more or less what we have been saying till now. We do apostolate but feel unable to achieve many of the thing we planned.
2. A second level of purification comes when in our apostolate we work hard to help somebody and these do not appreciate what we do, are not grateful, pretend more and more, spoil what we do for them. The Lord maybe is asking us: for whom are you working: for me or for yourself? For my Kingdom or for your gratification?
3. A third level, higher, comes when the lack of understanding and appreciation is not in those whom we help, who after all are not learned people, but when is in our confreres or superiors. They should know what apostolate is and instead of supporting me they criticize me for being late at the community moments, for spending money, for doing too much, they say that I work for pride etc. I am speaking of a situation in which I am in the right and really I am criticized wrongly. The Lord may be teaching us: are you working in my way or in your way?
4. Final and highest level of purification is there when I feel that God himself is not appreciating me, not listening to my requests which are not made for myself but for the sake of those I am working for. I am cold in prayer, God feels distant in spite the fact that I do everything for him. Do you remember Martha being scolded by Jesus after all the work done for preparing him the supper and the preference given to lazy Mary? It is the moment of the total surrender. Martha seems to have learned well and she shows it at the moment of the death of Lazarus, in the answer of faith she gives to Jesus. It is also the final cry of Jesus on the Cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” followed by: “Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit”.

God does not want us to work for him, not even to do his work, but to allow him to do his work in us. “It isn’t anymore me who lives but Christ who lives in me”. “It is in your weakness that I can show my strength”.

Let us remember:

• Suffering is never the final stage but a preparation to a higher joy, which often requires us to be purified. Is never a close room with no escape but a door to be opened to enter the glory.
• In the sufferance we are never alone, Jesus is accompanying us from the Cross.
• If we desire to join him on the cross, He takes us seriously and fulfills our desire.
• Whatever sufferance we are able to endure and offer to him is immediately transformed into grace for the whole world.
• Those who have less sufferance, are not necessarily the most holy. It could be that the Lord knows how weak they are, they are not ready yet and they would soon collapse.
• The joy does not always come from the end of the problem, but is an interior joy, a gift of the Spirit that comes from understanding the value of those moments.

For personal work:

• In which area am I afraid to suffer? (Physical, being rejected, being judged, etc.)
• How do I react when I face a problem?
• How do I react when I am corrected, misunderstood, etc.
• While looking at Jesus on the Cross did I ever have the desire of being more united to Him?