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Turn Your Crosses into Ladders

By Gabe Garnica

 

If Christ came to earth to teach us the way to Heaven, then we may rightly accept that his words and actions are sanctified lessons in that path.  His examples of love, service, sacrifice, mercy, compassion, dedication, and obedience to the Will of God are found throughout his life and ministry. Beyond the more obvious lessons, however, lie transcendent yet pervasive examples of how to fall. Typically, we see falls as dreaded, embarrassing stumbles to be avoided at all costs. Many times, we see them as windows to our weakness we would much rather stuff under the bed and forget or deny. Such terror in the face of falls dissolves in the face of trusting God. In that context, let me offer the following gentle suggestions.

God Fell for Us

We know that God is perfect and cannot fall but, in a sense, He fell for us from the moment He created us. We know that God loved us before He created us ( Jer 31:3) and that this love has been present in everything He has done for us ( Ps 139: 13-16).  We also know that Christ fell for us because he became one of us, while still divine as well, to defeat sin and permit our salvation.

Fall for God

There are mainly two reasons why we may fall.  We may fall due to our human weakness and sin. While we should certainly do our best to avoid such falls, the fact is that we will fall despite those struggles because we are human. The devil wants us to give up when we fall due to sin, to feel hopeless and helpless. Reconciliation offers us the way back from such falls precisely because God’s love always defeats the devil’s lies.

The second reason we may fall will be due to things beyond our control. These innocent falls are part of life. Since he was perfect and sinless, Christ never fell to sin, but he certainly fell into struggles and frustrations because he was human. St Alphonsus Liguori often tells us to offer our falls to the goodness of God’s Will regardless of our distaste for them.  People often allow injustice or misfortune to sow bitterness and resentment.  Again, that is precisely what the devil wants, so we must look beyond our human agenda and have enough trust and love of God to embrace such falls as His Will. Since God is all good, then it follows that his Will is all good. If we offer our falls as products of God’s Will, then we will come to accept them as serving some good purpose despite our distaste for them.

The Pauses That are Not

It is easy to see falls as mistakes to be avoided and embarrassing signs of our weakness. However, such feelings stem from worrying too much about what this world thinks of us or thinking too much about our ego.  Others see falls as breaks in the actions, pauses in the proceedings, intermissions or bathroom or food breaks during the play or big game. Such views help us to ignore or brush falls aside and fail to learn and grow from them.

The truth is, falls are a part of the big game and the play of life.  They are very much part of the action and players in our plot if we allow them to contribute to who we are and become. Imagine that every play or movie was all success and smiles. Such efforts would teach very little and pretend a lot. They would not be real.

The more we come to see our falls as active parts of our lives and not aberrations, the more we will learn from and, yes, even embrace them as lessons and opportunities to grow toward God.  Falls are not silent pauses; rather, they can speak volumes if we are willing to listen and act on them.

Let Your Crosses Become Ladders

St. Rose of Lima is quoted as saying that “Apart from the cross, there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven.”  If we truly fancy ourselves followers of Christ, we must start seeing our crosses as ladders rather than burdens.  The key to that view is trying to see falls as opportunities to learn how to grow toward God instead of feverishly trying to avoid them like misfortunes, mistakes, or failures. By doing this, we too may sanctify the falls in our lives rather than spend our efforts cursing them.

2018 Gabriel Garnica

 

 

Read all posts by Gabe Garnica Filed Under: Catholic Spirituality, Culture, Evangelization, Featured, Sacraments, Scripture, Spiritual Warfare, Theology Tagged With: Book of Jeremiah, Book of Psalms, reconciliation, St. Alphonsus Liguori, St. Rose of Lima

The Best Way to Handle Suffering is to EAT it !

By Gabe Garnica

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Been There, Done That?

We all feel acquainted enough with suffering to fancy ourselves authorities on the subject. Certainly, whether we admit it or not, we mingle much of the suffering in our lives with equal parts resentment, bitterness, anger, and whining.  In fact, we often add cries of injustice as a frosting to this exercise in self.  Look, I do not pretend for a second that many people have not experienced more than their fair share of terrible suffering, injustice, and pain.  Neither do I dare ignore the fact that many people seem to fall from one misfortune to another while others seemingly dance through life like privileged elites immune to tears and fears.  I have an aunt, for example, whose life has been nothing but a series of illnesses, bad breaks, and unfair results.  She ended up in a wheelchair at an early age and things have only gotten worse since then, leaving her practically blind today as well.

Unfairness is Part of Life

The reality is that people experience different kinds and levels of suffering, completely independent of their relative goodness, innocence, fault, or success.  Some already happy, healthy, and successful people never seem to suffer; while many depressed, unhealthy, and unlucky folks seem to only receive more suffering on top of their present struggles.

Saints certainly do not have a get-out-of –jail card when it comes to suffering.   Most of them experienced one difficulty after another, a litany of misfortunes, and enough unfairness to last a few lifetimes.  The fact that being closer to God often only means suffering more than others only adds to this whole perception of suffering as random unfairness  inflicted on us by a God munching on popcorn while we cry.

Follow the Leader

It is at this point, when we are almost ready to toss up our hands in disgust and refuse to participate any further in this seemingly twisted game of pain, however, that we need to pause, take a reality check, and get a grip. First, let us consider that Our Lord, the most innocent and faultless person that ever lived, suffered far more than any human ever will, for sins He did not commit, at the hands and accusations of people steeped in sin themselves.  Second, note that Christ did not let this stupendous injustice deter Him from exhibiting forgiveness, kindness, and compassion toward even those who caused His suffering. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, realize that Our Lord provided us with the most powerful and effective strategy for transcending suffering, and even using it as a vehicle for sanctification and salvation. Simply stated, and promoted by such greats of our Faith as St. Alphonsus Liguori, that strategy is to EAT the suffering in our lives.

E………….First, we must embrace whatever suffering comes our way just as Christ embraced His cross.  Anne Catherine Emmerich, the great mystic, even wrote that Our Lord kissed His cross upon receiving it. Being a Christian means following Christ, and following Christ means following Him as we carry our relatively small crosses.  We cannot carry our crosses if we do not embrace them upon receiving them. We can never accept something unless we first embrace it and hold it. In the context of suffering, then, we must first pick up our crosses and embrace them if we pretend to emulate He who willingly embraced His cross. Embracing in this context is more the physical and actual interaction with the suffering that faces us. The cancer patient who follows the doctor’s orders and undergoes the numerous tests and procedures instead of sitting home avoiding what is necessary to do is a prime example of someone who is embracing suffering rather than avoiding it.

A…………Second, we must move beyond merely embracing our suffering and learn to accept it.  Embracing and accepting in this context do not mean the same thing.  Simon embraced Christ’s cross, but unwillingly at first. St. Catherine Emmerich tells us that, as Simon connected with Who Christ was and what He was doing, he came to feel compassion for Him and more willingly embraced the task he had initially accepted by force.   When the above cancer patient moves beyond merely undergoing tests to refraining from crying “Why me” or cursing at everyone in sight, acceptance has begun.

T…………Once we have truly embraced and accepted the suffering that comes our way, out of a desire to please God or avoid offending Him, we need to move to the next and final phase in confronting suffering with an eye toward Heaven. In order to sanctify our suffering, we must transform that suffering from a bad thing we tolerate into a good thing we relish.  No, I have not lost my mind, but if we do not take this final step we may well lose our chance to use our earthly sufferings as the steps toward Heaven.

Three Step Toward Sanctification and Salvation

Embracing suffering is akin to willingly going to a drug store, buying, and then drinking unpleasant medicine.  It is an external compliance, acknowledgement, and consent to the need to take that medicine, regardless of how unpleasant that medicine may be.  Accepting that suffering, however, goes beyond that.  It occurs when we internalize the external compliance and move from merely going through the motions to avoid trouble, criticism, or looking bad. This is akin to taking the unpleasant medicine regularly as prescribed because we turn the task into a desired habit toward the goal of becoming better. Likewise, when we internalize suffering and see it as a chance for grace and sanctification, we have begun to accept that suffering as something useful, albeit unpleasant, which is better than bitterly cursing it.

The final, and most important step, however, is when we transform suffering from something unpleasant we tolerate for a purpose into something blessed and privileged that we relish as a gift from God.  You heard it right, suffering in this world is a gift from God that few ever embrace, accept, much less transform.

 

The Sacred Secret to Transforming Suffering

The secret to transforming suffering from a tolerated unpleasant chore into a relished pleasant blessing is not to be found in human nature or experience, for our weak and superficial humanity is incapable of ever truly rejoicing in the face of pain, suffering, misfortune, or mistreatment. In fact, human nature dictates just the opposite and, more often than not, suggests that we gripe, curse, blame, play the victim card, experience envy, or seek revenge.  Sadly, human nature would have us lose whatever graces we may have been able to scrape from tolerating suffering for the sake of our eternal salvation.  Few of us, if any, have the dedication, strength, and resolve to tolerate unpleasantness for so long and for such a wavering reason.  How then, did the saints do it?  Was it because they possessed some supernatural, inner gift that we are incapable of finding within ourselves?  Gladly, the answer is that we each possess the secret strategy to follow in the steps of the saints to transform suffering from a tolerated unpleasant thing into a desired blessing.

As described by Alphonsus Liguori and Fulton Sheen, the secret is to simply accept everything, good and bad, that happens in your life as coming from God for a purpose perhaps only known to Him which is consistent with your salvation and mission in life.  More often than not our gripes, complaints, and distaste for suffering come from seeing it from our own temporary, temporal, and personal perspective. However, if we view suffering and misfortune as coming from God for God’s ultimate purpose and truly love and trust God as always doing what is right by us, then we will obtain greater peace, contentment, patience, and solace than ever possible on our own terms!

Conclusion

Even Our Lord allowed His humanity to pause in the face of suffering, going as far as asking if the cup reserved for Him could be avoided.  However, Our Lord, and countless saints after Him, ultimately viewed suffering, not as an unpleasant chore to be tolerated for the sake of avoiding evil but, much more pleasantly and powerfully, as a blessed opportunity for following the Will of God, as Our Lord exemplified at Gethsamane and Calvary.

For us mere mortals, moreover, suffering in this world should rightly be seen as a chance to pay the debt of our sins in this life rather than in eternity where, if we play our cards right, we will enjoy the rewards of loyalty and dedication to God.  Thus, it is true that the secret to turning suffering into a blessing is to EAT that suffering.  Ultimately, suffering will move us farther from God if it becomes about us and closer to God if we turn it into all about following God’s Will.

2016  Gabriel Garnica

Read all posts by Gabe Garnica Filed Under: Spiritual Warfare, Theology, Therapeutic Tagged With: fulton sheen, St. Alphonsus Liguori, St. Catherine Emmerich, suffering

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