Mass Cards Online
| The Joy of Suffering |
 |
 |
 |
The Cross is the central symbol of our Catholic religion. It is a symbol of suffering, and our religion makes much of suffering. That is why our religion is such a joyful religion, such a glad religion; and that is why your normal Catholic is normally such a happy person.
Non-Catholics find this hard to understand. They see us fast during Lent, drape our altars with black on Good Friday, adore the image of our crucified Savior, and they conclude from this that Catholics are people who are a little morbid; who like to wallow in feelings of sadness who enjoy being depressed; who come to church for the purpose of shedding tears, of having tears yanked from them, like teeth through a kind of spiritual dentistry.
That is why they are surprised, and even shocked, to discover that Catholics as a rule have more fun than anybody, and habitually see the bright and funny side of everything…
This is what puzzles non-Catholics; and they are even more puzzled when we explain to them that we are joyful because our Catholic faith is a religion of suffering because its central symbol is the Cross.
And yet there is nothing tremendously mysterious about it. The secret of happiness is not to avoid suffering but to face it: to face it, to take it, and to make it work for you. If you plan your life on the principle that suffering is to be avoided at all costs, you will fail. You will fail miserably. It can’t be done. You may as well admit that from the very start. As one of our own poets has put it, “Into each life, some rain must fall; some days must be dark and dreary.”
Pain is part and parcel of the business of living. People get all hot and bothered about why this should be; why there should be so much suffering in the world; why God, who is so good, should permit so much sorrow; they get all worked up about what is called the Problem of Evil. But the reason why is really rather secondary, isn’t it, as far as the practical conduct of life is concerned? The main thing is to realize the fact. The fact is that we must live in a world in which suffering has a place, and we must, sooner or later, take our share of it. As another poet has put it, “We are born in each other’s pain, and we perish in our own.”
The problem, then, is not why the pain is. Much less is it, how to avoid pain. The problem is how to use pain, how to profit by it, how to make it pay. We must learn the uses of adversity.
There are two ways of taking pain. You can undergo it, or you can accept it. There is a great difference between the two. It is the difference between getting killed and laying down your life. We say of a pedestrian who is run over by a truck that he gets killed; of a soldier who dies in battle, we prefer to say, not merely that he got killed, but that he laid down his life for his country. The difference is obvious. The pedestrian had nothing whatever to do with his death; he merely underwent it. He neither foresaw his death nor did he accept it. He merely got it. Unfortunately. The soldier, on the other hand, by entering the service of his country, had deliberately chosen a course of action in which he foresaw that he would have to risk his life. He had accepted his death beforehand, freely. He had chosen to put his life to the noblest use that can be made of human life: to lay it down for one’s friends. Therefore, his death is a misfortune, certainly; but it is not an accident. It is a sacrifice; a gift; something splendid and beautiful.
This is what we learn from the Cross of Christ. We learn not merely to undergo suffering, but to accept it. Our Blessed Lord in heaven, looking down on us His children here on earth, saw that at some time or other in our lives, we must suffer. And so He became a man in order to teach us how to suffer. He took our sorrows upon Himself, and by His sufferings, we are healed. I guess that is the shortest way of putting the meaning of the Cross: it is God teaching us how to take it like a man.
Was there ever a man who suffered as God suffered? Look at Him as He hangs on the cross. See the back ploughed up by the lash; the face grimed with spittle; the head bound with thorns; the pierced hands and feet; the side opened with a lance. He has shed the last drop of His blood: no man can give more than that. And the point is that He did not have to suffer any of these things. This is God, remember; God infinite and omnipotent. Not all the black kindred of the Pharisees, not all the might and majesty of imperial Rome could have harmed so much as a hair of Him, had He not wanted it. But He did want it. It was for this that He became a Man, because it was only as a Man that He could be spit upon, scourged, crowned with thorns, betrayed with a kiss, nailed to a Cross. It was only as a Man that He could die for men.
This, then, was the use which God made of suffering. This is how God made pain pay. “He loved me, and He delivered Himself up for me.” This word of Saint Paul explains as well as any other the mystery of joy in suffering. It is a mystery of love. For the joy of love consists not in receiving but in giving; everybody who has ever been in love knows that. It is Lesson Number One in the primer of that fascinating subject. The trouble is that a few magazine writers and movie makers have gotten hold of it and mixed it up. But the real experts on love do not live in Hollywood. They are those who have suffered much. They are your own fathers and mothers. Ask them, and they will tell you that love is not any nonsense about moonlight and roses, or tune and June, but something more simple and the same time more difficult. Love is a giving; and therefore, a sacrifice; and therefore, it means, very often, denying yourself, going without, making do--for the one you love. And they will tell you further that although love is such a painful thing sometimes, although it takes so much out of you, although it pierces like a lance, yet they would not exchange it for all the world.
“One of the soldiers pierced His side with a lance, and immediately there came out blood and water.” And Saint John adds that “they looked on Him whom they pierced.” During the time of Lent, we should do this very often. We should look on Him whose heart, by our sins, we have pierced. We must try to bring home to ourselves the miracle of love that made Saint Paul cry out, “He loved me, and so He delivered Himself up for me.” I think that if we do this, the little self-denials and mortifications we practice during Lent will not seem so hard after all. Compared to what He gave, they are not so much to give, are they?
- Fr. Horacio de la Costa, SJ (May 9, 1916 – March 20, 1977)
Fr. de la Costa, recognized as an authority on Philippine culture and history, was the first Filipino Provincial Superior of the Society of Jesus in the Philippines.
|
spacer
spacer
The more than 300 men of the Philippine Province of the Society of Jesus serve in five universities, numerous schools for basic education, two diocesan major seminaries, three urban and five rural parishes... (READ MORE)
Thank you for considering a donation to help our mission.
Your gift will be much appreciated and put to good use. Be assured, too, that you will be with us in our prayers, Masses and apostolic works, even as we also ask you to continue to pray for us.
Sincerely yours in the Lord,
JOSE C. J. MAGADIA, S.J.
Provincial
Curious about something? Trying to find a Jesuit?
Or just want to give us some feedback?
Send us a quick note!