I have a summarized recap at the end, if this wall-of-text is too much for your little bit of free time (or limited attention span)... :-D
Last week, on Tuesday, most of the guys at Brute (including myself), went over the St. Nicholas Catholic Church in Sunman, IN, to attend the funeral for a younger brother of one of the guys who had tragically died a few days before. We had received word about a week before, right after the senior tribute night, and had all gone up to the chapel and prayed a divine mercy chaplet for the young man who had passed away, as well as for Joe and his family. The funeral - like that somber night - was also a powerful moment, showing the fraternity and concern present among all of us at Brute. It was the middle of finals week but just about every guy figured out a way to reschedule his finals for that day and cut time out of studying or sleeping in order to ride the hour and a half to be present for the funeral.
But, that is not what this post will be about (though it could be). What I want to talk about is what Fr. Shaun Widdington spoke on in his homily. The Gospel was about the death of Lazarus and how Jesus waited 3 days before coming to Bethany and raising Lazarus from the dead. Father spoke on how often-times in the midst of loss, or pain, or suffering (of all kinds, but especially the poignant suffering that accompanies the death of someone we love) we feel like Jesus isn't there, or we don't understand why such-and-such a loss has befallen us, or we think that there is no purpose for this suffering. As Father explained it, often-times in this life we find ourselves on Holy Saturday. We often live through excruciatingly painful moments, our own Good Friday's, but we are unable to find hope, or purpose, or God, in that moment. And then Father said something profound (for me), he said that Jesus Christ is our hope, in His resurrection we find the promise of our own resurrection, in his coming back to life we find God's promise to those who love Him of eternal life. This wasn't profound because I didn't know it, rather, it deeply impacted me because it reminded me that our hope must be in God, in eternity. Often I want to figure out how suffering in this life can be transformed, and thus eliminated, and surely that is a possibility - the cross is our standard of victory precisely because through the cross Jesus conquered sin and death and ransomed us so that we can become sons/daughters of God - but sometimes suffering doesn't seem to have a point, oftentimes we can't see how God can bring good out of suffering. Father, in his homily, reminded me that as humans we often can't find the good in a particular event - we can't see how the untimely, unexpected death of a young man can possibly fit into God's plan or how He could possibly bring good out of it. Our sight is limited, even when we look at the cross and see how God brought good out of it, we glance back at our own lives and still feel lost, forgotten, even abandoned. Father reminded me (and I needed that reminder) that our hope must - in the end - rest in heaven. Sometimes we will never understand why some suffering, or some difficulty, or some loss has happened to us, at least not until heaven.
Why is this? Why do we sometimes find ourselves in the darkness of suffering and can't feel the light of Christ? Well, this morning in the office of readings I was confronted with precisely that question. The first psalm (Psalm 44) talks of trusting in God:
It was you who saved us from our foes, it was you who put our foes to shame. All day long our boast was in God, and we praised your name without ceasing.
But then in the second psalm the psalmist finds himself lost, seemingly abandoned by God:
Yet now you have rejected us, disgraced us: you no longer go forth with our armies. You make us retreat from the foe and our enemies plunder us at will. You make us like sheep for the slaughter and scatter us among the nations.
And in the 3rd psalm his confusion grows worse because he have been faithful, he hasn't forgotten God, yet he feels crushed beneath the oppression, suffering, and death experienced in this world:
This befell us though we had not forgotten you; though we had not been false to your covenant, though we had not withdrawn our hearts; though our feet had not strayed from your path. Yet you have crushed us in a place of sorrows and covered us with the shadow of death. Had we forgotten the name of our God or stretched out our hands to another god[.] Would not God have found this out, he who knows the secrets of the heart? It is for you that we face death all day long and are counted as sheep for the slaughter. Awake, O Lord, why do you sleep? Arise, do not reject us for ever! Why do you hide your face and forget our oppression and misery? For we are brought down low to the dust; our body lies prostrate on the earth. Stand up and come to our help! Redeem us because of your love!
Sometimes we feel the same way. Life is going along smoothly, our relationship with God is alive and well, we are progressing in virtue, filled with His joy, and then something terrible, painful, or difficult happens and we feel like we've lost contact with God, we can no longer see His plan in the midst of the suffering that has afflicted us, or worse, we feel abandoned or forgotten by God.
As I was reading these psalms, my mind went back to the homily that Father gave at the funeral, and how he ended with the difficult truth that true happiness is only found in the next life. Sometimes we can't understand suffering. Sometimes things do look hopeless, but Christ calls us to continue hoping in Him. Sometimes we are stuck on Holy Saturday for a long time, sometimes the tomb looks sealed, and no matter what we do we just can't figure out where God's plan is at. This is the problem of evil, the question that we have of how God - if He is good - can allow bad things to happen to us. We can philosophically say that evil exists because of free will - we bring it upon ourselves. We can theologically say that God loves us so much that He was willing to give us free will - knowing that we would sin, bringing that suffering upon ourselves - and suffer and die to bring us back to Himself. We can spiritually say that suffering comes from our lack of love of God - of choosing something else over Him, which will never fill the need we have for God, and thus, we experience pain. But sometimes those explanations don't seem to cut it. Sometimes we can't figure out why a certain loss - maybe the death of a loved one, or an illness, or a spiritual emptiness - has befallen us and we certainly can't see how God can bring good out of it.
In this difficulty the answer is again found in Christ's resurrection. In this time after Easter, when we get to constantly celebrate the awesomeness of the resurrection, we are called to remember the entire paschal mystery, Christ's passion, death, and resurrection. They all go together, and they all point us towards our hope that is in eternal life with Him. We aren't promised earthly happiness, actually we are asked to pick up our cross, but - if we are faithful - we are promised eternal happiness in heaven. The wonderful truth of Christianity is that we are made for a happiness which only is found beyond this world. As Augustine says, our hearts are restless until they rest in God; no earthly pleasures, or stuff, or peace, will ever be enough for us. Even if we could avoid earthly suffering (which we can't), we are made for something more, we are made in the image and likeness of God and He offers us eternal bliss with Him, not anywhere else. But this promise of future happiness is precisely something in the future, and the road there may be twisted and rocky. Sometimes following Christ seems easy, fun, and exciting,but sometimes it is not - the road is often narrow.
In all of this it seems difficult to remain positive, but we must always remember that our hope is in God, not ourselves. If we rely on ourselves to figure out why some suffering has struck us, at some point we won't be able to figure it out and then we are left in despair. But this despair is exactly what happens when we lose hope in Christ. Hoping in Him, in his promise of eternal life and eternal happiness, requires us to not rely only on ourselves and to trust in God. God promises us an eternal, complete, beyond-this-world happiness, and that requires that we trust in God, who is beyond this world. You can't have it both ways; you can't have eternal happiness in a temporal world; you can't accept the gift of Heaven if you think you can create it for yourself on earth. Earthly suffering can be transformed when we view it with the eyes of faith, but it also can be accepted - even when we don't see how it can be transformed - through that same faith which shows us the beautiful promise of heaven.
Look at Mary. She is a humble, beautiful, and holy young lady, and then an angel appears to her and asks her to become the mother of God. She doesn't understand, yet she accepts (trusting in God, not herself). And despite this intense trust that she shows to God - beyond anything any of us have ever done - she experiences a life that is chock full of terrible sufferings. She is told that sword will pierce her heart, she has to flee into Egypt to escape Herod, she loses her Son in the temple, she watchers her Son get beaten, condemned to die, carrying the cross, and then crucified, she is at the foot of the cross, watching the life drain from her divine Son, and then He dies. Her grief is impossible to contemplate, her pain, difficult to think about. Of course, her life wasn't all pain and suffering - surely there were moments of peace, love, happiness, fun, etc. - but what I realized was that Mary, the holiest human ever (besides Jesus), wasn't exempt from the sufferings that afflict us all, if anything, she experienced more of them. What gives? That doesn't make sense to us.
But if we look at the entire picture, including eternity, we suddenly find hope, and joy, and happiness again. Despite all that pain, what is Mary given? - the queen-ship of heaven and the most perfect joy - having both body and soul - in paradise forever! For a long time I didn't really know why the last two glorious mysteries of the rosary - the assumption and coronation of Mary - were there. Yeah, they were teachings of the church, but they didn't seem to fit into the scope of the other mysteries, which are all about Jesus' redemption of mankind. But now I have realized that it is in the light of the assumption and coronation that we realize the scope and grandeur of heaven that is bought for us through Christ's incarnation, passion, and resurrection. Mary, as always, brings us closer to Christ! In her, we see - in its entirety - Christ's promise of eternal life. We are called to the same trust and faith in God - even in the midst of intense sufferings - that Mary had. We are promised the same intense joy - if we remain faithful - that Mary has.
Now, looking back through this post, there is some sense that this is a bit of a downer. There is something very enticing about the Gospel of prosperity that claims that Jesus came so that we might have earthly wealth and happiness. But if we really think about it, salvation must be so much more than that. If salvation was all about bringing us earthly joy then it isn't very valuable - we can try to get earthly joy on our own, without God becoming man. No, salvation involves saving us from sin, and death, and hatred - not from earthly troubles. Salvation is a promise of perfect happiness, not the imperfect kind that we try to find on earth. Now, this isn't to say that suffering and pain are good things; certainly they aren't; they came with the fall. But, the paschal mystery invites us to lift our gaze, to have hope in the eternal life prepared for us, to see that the "life in abundance" promised us by Christ is so much more than earthly abundance.
Alright, time for a recap and conclusion: Sometimes we find ourselves on our own Holy Saturday. We experience loss, pain, hatred, doubt, or death and we don't know why. Of course, we can always offer it up, and try to grow to love God more though it, but sometimes even that doesn't make it any easier to bear. Sometimes we feel empty, abandoned, forgotten by God - we feel despair - and we don't know what to do. But in those moments, above all, we must remain steadfast in our hope of eternal life. Sometimes we will experience earthly suffering, and often those struggles won't go away; we can't see how God could transform them into something good. In those moments, we must lift our eyes to the promise of life to come, to the eternal happiness that awaits us if we keep the faith. Yes, struggles will beset us - and sometimes they don't go away (at least, for a long time), but through it all we must struggle to be like Mary, trusting through everything, knowing that God promises those who love Him bliss in heaven, not on earth.
Now, all that said, don't think I'm experiencing some terrible crisis or anguish or something - I am doing just great at the moment (having fun with the family, planning for vacation, getting stuff ready for the NAC, etc.), but over the last week or so I have continuously been struck with ideas regarding the fact that our hope must be in heaven, not in ourselves, or on earth. But, God gives us this hope in an incredible way. As the prayer for the end of the Office of Readings for today says:
God our Father, life of the faithful, glory of the humble, happiness of the just, hear our prayer. Fill our emptiness with the blessing of the Eucharist, the foretaste of eternal joy. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Our hope, then, isn't even as far removed as Heaven. Jesus gives us His divine hope, and love, and joy in giving us Himself in the Blessed Sacrament. This is the promise of eternal life, and the gift of that divine life into our souls, and that which gives us strength for the journey... Yeah, the Eucharist is everything, because it is Jesus Himself. Struggling? - spend an hour gazing at our Lord in the Eucharist. Empty? - receive the fount of all grace in Holy Communion. Hurting? - accept the token of Jesus' immense love for you in His Body and Blood. Happy? - thank the Lord of joy for that gift. Does the Eucharist take away suffering? - nope, but it gives us the strength to carry our crosses, the joy of intimate union with Christ, and the hope of eternal life with Him forever.
And that's all for now! Thanks for reading!
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I hate to say it, but I often see myself do the same thing. I look back at Lent and I'm disappointed at the lack of progress, or thinking about the past week, I become frustrated at my slothfulness in studies, lack of generosity to those around me, distractedness in prayer, or whatever. Gosh, I want to be a great saint, but at the end of the day I'm so often like "Sorry, Lord ... again." Think about the apostles, waiting in the upper room, hearing the news of the resurrection, and then Jesus appears in their midst - surely they hung their heads in shame. "Sorry, Lord..." They, Our Lord's closest friends, were wimps. I know the feeling! I know what I should do, and then I don't do it - "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" [Matthew 26:40]. 
