” We would have to be living the life of a hermit to close our eyes to the pain and misery of life about us. Our hearts would be of stone not to be moved by a friend’s marriage on the rocks, a neighbor’s child with a nervous breakdown and the suffering and heartbreak which is the common lot of so many in daily life. The grim pictures on TV of war, famine and childrean dying of starvation are calculated to shake even the faith of a saint. No wonder many people are forced to the conclusion that it is punishment from God or that there is no God at all. There is no understanding why good-living people are asked to suffer and carry such heavy crosses. Nothing threatens our confidence in a caring God more that the sight of suffering.
The book of Job is an attempt to come to grips with the problem of human suffering in a brutally direct way. Job, a good-living religious man is put to the test by God. He is stripped of hs wife, family, and all his possesions, and is finally struck down with ill-health. He is so overcome that he feels there is nothing to live for but misery. For all his deliberations as to why he has to suffer or why God has put His hand down so heavily upon him, Job doesn’t come up with any convincing answer to the meaning of his present distress. The truth is that there is no easy answer. Job was not the first person, nor the last to be baffled by the problem of suffering. Illness and death can be the most trying and important times of our life. Often we neglect God until we are struck down in such a crisis with ill-health and have inactivity thrust upon us. When we rise above our despair we go to Him looking for His healing grace. We are driven to trust Him totally, for there is no other way to face suffering than to realise that it must be part of God’s mysterious plan. Sickness forces us to put aside the feverish activity of daily living and focus instead on the home which is offered us by our Heavenly Father. These are the occasions which are especially critical, when we have to face up to the hopes and disappointment of life. There is no point in thinking what we might do if our circumstances were different.
In the Gospel, Mark 1:29-39, Jesus comes to Simon’s mother-in-law, stretches out His hand and cures her. Christ gives us no answer about suffering nor does He try to explain why people have to suffer but He showed us the importance of turning suffering into joy. By identifying Himself with the sick and dying even to dying Himself on the Cross. Jesus clearly revealed that suffering is part of God’s mysterious plan. It all depends on how we shoulder our cross, for, by uniting our trials with Christ’s we can enjoy His victory. Whatever happens to us, all things will work together for those who love God and share in the passion of Christ.
The gospel does not guarantee our freedom from suffering but gives us the assurance that God is with us however great our suffering may be. “
Republished from LOGOS, The weekly bulletin of the Parish of Saint John the Evangelist without permission from the author.
I got this from the Sunday reading of our church. I republish it without their permission not for self credit but in order for it to reach a wider audience.
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