Readings for Sunday, January 25/ 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Psalm 25:4-9
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Mark 1:14-20
It’s nice to be home after a
couple of weeks moving around, and especially after such an intense week as
this last one has been. Last Sunday morning I departed from Baton Rouge as part
of a bus group of over 450 people headed toward Washington, D.C. for the annual
March for Life held there on January 22. It was a phenomenal trip with many
graces and that is because the trip is a pilgrimage and not simply a nice
vacation away from the worries of parish life. At the beginning of the trip, we
pray a prayer with all of the youth on the buses that reminds us that we are
pilgrims and not tourist. It includes such things as: when someone else grabs
the last of the food I want, Lord help me remember that I’m a pilgrim, not a
tourist. When someone takes the spot I wanted to sit… When someone is always
late and I’m on time… When things don’t go according to schedule… etc. All of
these various scenarios are mentioned to emphasize that pilgrims suffer through
things and unite them with the Lord, where tourists might simply try to make
things more comfortable and avoid the suffering.
With this little prayer
completed, everyone realizes from the start that the pilgrimage is one that
will involve suffering and self-denial in some way. To follow up that prayer,
we include a short talk on ‘offering it up,’ the traditional Catholic practice
of uniting our sufferings to those of Jesus Christ and knowing that He will
make use of them for some good in our soul or the souls of others. As the bus
youth minister I was in charge of both of these and had the joy of putting them
into practice almost immediately as the DVD player on our bus wouldn’t play the
DVD we intended to show and which was foundational to the rest of the trip and
on top of that the AC quit working, leaving us in a nice extra warm bus on the
way up north. We arrived in Hanceville, AL that afternoon for the celebration
of Holy Mass and I had the privilege of offering it and preaching to half of
the pilgrimage group. I spoke about the Divine Will and how sometimes despite
our best efforts things don’t go as planned and we need to be open to God
changing things on us during the trip and that we are invited to submit to that
and joyfully follow where the Lord leads. A few minutes later we found
ourselves in the parking lot preparing to head off to DC when we discover that
at this point our DVD had broken, our AC had broken, and now the whole bus had
broken! I sat there saying to the kids (and to myself!) ‘It’s okay. God has a
plan here. Like I said in Mass, we’re not in control and we simply have to roll
with what He unveils for us.’ And so the other 8 buses of our entourage rolled
out and we stayed put waiting for our repairman.
The six hours that we waited gave
us plenty of time to pray, play games, get to know each other and sing songs,
including our own rendition of a familiar classic: “The wheels on the bus they
stay, stay stay”, “The emergency lights glow red, red, red”, and so on. What
struck me, though, was that in the midst of suffering the youth responded with an
attitude of joy and holy resignation to what God was doing. The adults
struggled a bit, but the young people went with the flow just as we had
advised. At 11pm we found ourselves unloading and reloading onto a different
bus. At 6am we found ourselves doing the same thing again as we reached our bus
to be used the rest of the week. And in the end, that setback and suffering we
enduring of having to change plans, buses, and everything in between became our
glory. We rejoiced in it and became one of the most tight-nit and prayerful
groups.
I know that’s a lot of story and
not much homily, but I mention it because it was my lived experience that
brought me to a well for reflection throughout the week on a single point: our
response to suffering makes us who we are. Every one of us can name the many
things that have happened in our lives that were a cross in some way, and
chances are those same places are where radical growth or change happened. We
can see it across the board in any type of suffering: physical suffering,
emotional distress, loss of loved ones, spiritual struggles, temptations,
mental trials, and much more. Every one of those things is a place where we
encountered a cross and had a choice to pick it up and walk or to flee from it
in search of comfort. Our choice changes things.
The end of the trip was the cap
and summation of my reflections on suffering through the week as on the bus
ride home we watched the movie The Giver. I don’t know if you’ve read the book
or seen the movie, but it was fascinating to me. The premise of it is that a
society saw the pain suffered by humanity and sought to be freed from it, so
they created a special society in which they eliminated all that might cause
pain. They minimized differences, inequality and injustices to make things
uniform. This makes sense. But they also took away other things like art,
music, and dance. They limited freedom and personal touch. They dulled emotion
and the capacity to love. In the name of being freed from pain, they removed
all that makes the human person truly human! In a very real sense we can say
that to be human is to suffer because to be human is to love and to love is to
suffer. This sounds like a big circle, but the truth is that God is love itself
and love is self-giving. The Father sent the Son and permitted His death for
us. The Son permits His humiliation and death. And the Spirit pains Himself by
remaining in hearts that often desire to have nothing to do with Him. While we believe
that God doesn’t suffer like humans do, there is a sort of self-sacrificial
suffering that is present in the Blessed Trinity and if we are invited into the
life of the Trinity by our baptism, then it makes sense that we are invited to
a deeper suffering than most would have.
If I lost you there, let me
attempt to clarify. God is love, total self-gift. The more we love, which entails
suffering, the more we become who we are created to be. And so the invitation
here is threefold:
First, we must recognize our
suffering. Sometimes we experience pains or crosses in our life but fail to
name them such. We see them as inconveniences and many other things, but they
are crosses. So what is the cross you bear? More than likely it is several.
Second, find ways to respond to
it. A book club I’m part of sends a book each month and each title addresses
some specific topic but in the end they are all guide on suffering well. It
might be depression, grief, anger, temptations to sin, lack of faith, problems
in prayer, but they all provide means to working through a particular cross. So
when you name your cross, look for proven ways to help walk with it.
And lastly, don’t walk with it
alone. Unite your crosses to Christ Jesus, Who has power to make all things
fruitful and can use your suffering to build up the kingdom. There’s no special
formula. You just say, ‘Lord, I unite my sufferings to yours. Please make them
fruitful.’ Or something to that effect. The genuineness of prayer is more
important than the words.
Suffering makes us who we are.
Suffering makes us human. Do not fear the crosses that come your way, but take
them up and bear them with Christ, knowing that He is with you, shaping you and
saving you by your ‘yes’ to His will.
