Twenty-second Sunday of Ordinary Time-A
A large portion of advertising dollars goes to relieving or mitigating the suffering of the human condition. These messages claim they can help with physical and mental maladies. Some even claim they can eliminate the pain. Pharmaceutical companies don’t spend the money for nothing; the ads actually work.
Not everyone, but some live by a notion that drugs and medicine can alleviate any ache or pain that surfaces on any given day. Human experience shows this is not true, and it never will be. Nonetheless, the first human reaction to suffering is to see it as an enemy to be vanquished, with no real value to human life. This type of reasoning has led to an increase in support for euthanasia sanitized by the term “mercy killings”.
Jesus turns these types of thoughts on their head. In the Gospel this weekend, Jesus has a conversation with Peter, giving him a glimpse of his future, which centers on his suffering and death, and then his resurrection on the third day. Peter reacts to Jesus’ statement by saying, “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.”
Jesus rebukes him probably in the harshest of all comments in scripture by saying, “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” Take notice, it is the same man who proclaimed that Jesus is the Son of God when all others did not recognize his divinity.
There are two ways of looking at Peter’s comment and Jesus’ reply. Obviously, Peter no longer considered what he had proclaimed earlier; he could only see the situation through the eyes of humanity. Spiritual considerations never came into play for Peter. He could have responded the way he did because he truly loved Jesus and wanted to spare him from suffering. Another explanation could be that, as his follower, he too would suffer the same fate as his master, a thought Peter was not ready to entertain. Jesus corrects Peter by saying there is more to the subject than just a human interpretation.
The lesson from this encounter is relevant to everyone because, no matter who you are, you will experience suffering. Like Peter, we often view our suffering only through human eyes and do not consider the spiritual benefits of our maladies. This is not to say Christians should be masochists, but it also means suffering has a spiritual dimension for our good.
Making some sense of suffering begins with our identity as adopted sons and daughters of God through our baptism. When we are grafted into the Body of Christ through the sacrament, we follow Christ as the head who has suffered and died before us. Our journey in life is to mimic Christ’s life and incorporate it as best we can.
Regarding suffering, thinking only as a human does not see its value because we view it outside the context of a properly ordered Christian life. Our job, along with the grace we receive, is to become better and holier people. Theologically, life is meant to progress to a level of perfection appropriate to our beings. It has also been called Christian perfection.
Our struggle is we really do not want to spend time on perfection. Too often we think we are just doing fine.
When we find ourselves in a place of relative ease, both temporally and spiritually, we recoil at the thought of any suffering. We love living in the status quo, and the thought that suffering can help us attain Christian perfection is far from our minds. This is how a human thinks, not how God thinks.
Suffering is a result of a Fallen world, and only through Christ can it be used sublimely to defeat the enemy or the source of suffering and death. Many examples show that sacrifice, a type of suffering, is the prerequisite for something greater. Traditionally, Christian prose has often used the example of gold being refined in the fire, where the dross falls off, leaving a purer and more precious element.
Analogously, when our lives are refined through sacrifice and suffering, a purer, holier, and more perfect person emerges as long as it is in conjunction with the sufferings of Christ. Surely the suffering and dying with Christ is the necessary means of eternal life.
When we join our sufferings with Christ’s, we no longer think as a human would, but more like God. We need to think more like God because we can grow and become more perfect, which is the purpose of our life. Jesus tells us, “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?”
A healthy acceptance of suffering, along with our union with Christ, will help us greatly attain what we were created for: Christian perfection and a life forever in God.