Sixteenth Sunday of the Year - July 18, 2004

    In today’s second reading, St. Paul seems to make a boast beyond reason. He says that in his own flesh he fills up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ. How is that so? Did not our Savior’s suffering for us suffice? Perhaps it would be wise to rather ask ourselves what lay behind our Lord’s suffering: was it not His absolute obedience, His submission to the Father, which in a fallen and sinful world certainly involves suffering? Indeed, suffering in our wounded world is a given; it happens. We only escape it for a little while; we all have a share in suffering in one way or another. But what is not a given, what does not just happen is obedience to God, to the good and true. This is taken up freely and willfully. And that is what our Savior did for us. He obeyed the will of the Father, which involved suffering. And following the way of obedience laid out for us by Him still involves suffering. This is the suffering St. Paul is talking about. It is not something that would detract from the work of Christ, but it is the continuation of that work, in us, who as disciples of Christ must be willing to suffer for Him (really, with Him) in doing the will of God. And in the midst any and all suffering that comes our way, readily identify it with the sufferings of Christ, a real means of drawing nearer, ever nearer, to God the Father.
    But the apostle Paul also says that he finds his joy in the suffering that he endures for the sake of fellow Christians. Joy in suffering? This must sound very strange in a culture which claims that suffering is about the only evil that is left in our “moral” thinking. How can there ever be joy in suffering? Again, we trace answer back to Jesus, who was the suffering Servant of God and who said exultantly that no one could take His joy away from Him, no one, no matter what they would try to do to Him. What joy could there possibly be in the midst of the horrors of the crucifixion? What joy in that most awful sign of sorrow? The joy, my friends, of doing the Father’s will, which is that the Son of God should die for us and that through His death, death and sin might be conquered. That joy. The joy of knowing that one is drawing near to the God of joy and goodness, even if the pathway is sometimes suffering.
    Again, of course, this makes little sense in a culture that spends little, very little, energy on striving after virtue, truth and goodness, after such seeming dreams of heaven, that place of eternal, unending joy. All this talk about obedience to Another and the suffering that it involves is what the world seeks so laboriously to avoid. Freedom from suffering -- at all costs -- is the motto of a society and people who no longer have what St. Paul goes on to say is the reason for his joy -- “the mystery of Christ in you, your hope of glory.” How sad that the great reality of heaven and eternal life has gradually slipped from our modern consciousness. And yet this theme is all through the New Testament, all through the tradition of the Church. It is heaven, and the hope of attaining it, that molded men and women into saints. It is the vision of a glory beyond imagining -- the eternal, light-filled presence of God -- that inspired our Catholic forefathers to build churches that seemed to aspire to the very gates of that glory. And it is that glory that fills the soul of the sojourning pilgrim in this life with the hope St. Paul mentions. The hope of glory. And the joy that flows from that, the knowledge that, yes, this life in all its wonder and goodness, is yet fraught with disappointments, sorrows, and suffering and eventually with death, but in the end I, you, have a hope that carries our vision beyond this life.
    All pie in the sky nonsense? Yes, it is, it is, to those who will not see first of all that every attempt to build a completely satisfying life in this world has been doomed to failure. And secondly, is the truth that this life is not enough to satisfy us; we desire something bigger and beyond this world, beyond time and space. As the writer of the ancient book of Ecclesiastes put it, “God has put eternity into the hearts of men.” It’s that that we long for, unending life, unending happiness, unending joy. And so the sufferings that come our way in this life are often rude reminders of our predicament: that the ultimate fulfillment we long for must be beyond this world.
    We know, of course, that finding our way to eternal joy is by following our Savior, who proclaimed Himself “the way, the truth and the life.” Here then is the way of obedience that will involve suffering (as it did for Jesus and St. Paul) as well as great joys: sufferings that serve to remind us that we are still on the way, we are pilgrims; and great joys that serve as foretastes to that glory that is yet to be revealed, the hope of glory St. Paul speaks of in his letter to the Christians at Colossae.
    This is a hope that overcomes suffering. For suffering, by itself, never saved anybody and should never be sought after for itself. Our hope is not in suffering but in God who calls us to Himself, along a path on which we meet with sorrows and joys, pain and happiness, but a path of hope, meaning and purpose, because of the end to which we are aspiring. In the light of that end -- eternity with God -- joy is born in our hearts, even joy in the midst of suffering, that joy that never left the heart of our Lord, even in the moment of His laying down His life for us. For He is our hope -- “the mystery of Christ in you, your hope of glory.” He is our way. He is our life. As the NT writer of the letter to the Hebrews described our pilgrimage: “Let us then lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”