Jeff Cavins, Author and Speaker, discusses how our suffering is part of our role as the Body of Christ in this excerpt from his talk entitled “When You Suffer: Biblical Keys for Hope and Understanding.” Mr. Cavins’ talk was part of the Evangelization Series at Franciscan University of Steubenville.
Today’s Meditation
Minute Meditation – The Awful Grace of God
The suffering creatures of this world have a divine Being who does not judge or condemn them, or in any way stand aloof from their plight, but instead, a Being who hangs with them and flows through them, and even toward them, in their despair. How utterly different this is from all the greedy and bloodthirsty gods of most of world history! What else could save the world? What else would the human heart love and desire? Further, this God wants to love and be loved rather than be served (John 15:15). How wonderful is that?! It turns the history of religion on its head. Jesus said it of himself: “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32) and “from my breast will flow fountains of living water” (7:38). It is only the “harsh and dreadful” commingling of both divine love and human tears which opens the deepest floodgates of both God and the soul. Eventually, I must believe, it will open history itself. I will sink my anchor here. To mourn for one is to mourn for all. To mourn with all is to fully participate at the very foundation of Being Itself. For some reason, which I have yet to understand, beauty hurts. Suffering opens the channel through which all of Life flows and by which all creation breathes, and I still do not know why. Yet it is somehow beautiful, even if it is a sad and tragic beauty.
—from the book Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps by Richard Rohr
Meditation of the Day – What Hurts is Not So Much Suffering as The Fear of Suffering
“What really hurts is not so much suffering as the fear of suffering. If welcomed trustingly and peacefully, suffering makes us grow. It matures and trains us, purifies us, teaches us to love unselfishly, makes us poor in heart, humble, gentle, and compassionate toward our neighbor. Fear of suffering, on the other hand, hardens us in self-protective, defensive attitudes, and often leads us to make irrational choices with disastrous consequences.”— Fr. Jacques Philippe, p. 47
//Catholic Company//
Meditation of the Day – The Lord is Gentle and Merciful
“I realize as never before that the Lord is gentle and merciful; He did not send me this heavy cross until I could bear it. If He had sent it before, I am certain that it would have discouraged me . . . I desire nothing at all now except to love until I die of love. I am free, I am not afraid of anything, not even of what I used to dread most of all . . . a long illness which would make me a burden to the community. I am perfectly content to go on suffering in body and soul for years, if that would please God. I am not in the least afraid of living for a long time; I am ready to go on fighting.”— St. Therese of Lisieux, p. 122
//Catholic Company//
Meditation of the Day – He Asks the Sick to Believe
“Often Jesus asks the sick to believe. He makes use of signs to heal: spittle and the laying on of hands, mud and washing. The sick try to touch him, ‘for power came forth from him and healed them all’. And so in the sacraments Christ continues to ‘touch’ us in order to heal us. Moved by so much suffering Christ not only allows himself to be touched by the sick, but he makes their miseries his own: ‘He took our infirmities and bore our diseases’. But he did not heal all the sick. His healings were signs of the coming of the Kingdom of God. They announced a more radical healing: the victory over sin and death through his Passover. On the cross Christ took upon himself the whole weight of evil and took away the ‘sin of the world’, of which illness is only a consequence. By his passion and death on the cross Christ has given a new meaning to suffering: it can henceforth configure us to him and unite us with his redemptive Passion.”—Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1504-05
//Catholic Company//
Meditation of the Day – Justice Demands It
“I saw my Guardian Angel, who ordered me to follow him. In a moment I was in a misty place full of fire in which there was a great crowd of suffering souls. They were praying fervently, but without effect for themselves; only we can come to their aid. The flames which were burning them do not touch me at all. My Guardian Angel did not leave me for an instant. I asked these souls what their greatest suffering was. They answered me in one voice that their greatest torment was longing for God . . . [I heard an interior voice] which said, My mercy does not want this, but justice demands it.“— St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, p. 35
//Catholic Company//
Minute Meditation – The Healing Power of God
How hard it is to slow down and let the healing happen when the very sickness is a fear of slowing down, of not being able to function as well as we could, of paralysis of will. Healing is most impossible when we cannot forget the sickness long enough for healing to start. Rarely do we realize the healing power that is going on inside us. We do not notice it because we mistake it for something else, we mistake it for an evil. If we have learned to enter into prayer, then we see with new eyes and hear with new ears. And what we perceive is that what we previously thought was surely some scourge of Satan in our lives, is in fact the healing hand of God leading us through the fire of suffering in order to purify and heal what only suffering can heal.
—from the book Song of the Sparrow: New Poems and Meditations by Murray Bodo, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
Morning Offering – Suffering Clears the Way for Grace
“It is suffering, more than anything else, which clears the way for the grace which transforms human souls. Suffering, more than anything else makes present in the history of humanity the powers of the Redemption.”
— Pope St. John Paul II
//Catholic Company//
Morning Offering – Lest There be Two Bad Men
“If you are suffering from a bad man’s injustice, forgive him—lest there be two bad men.”
— St. Augustine
//Catholic Company//