Suffering is one of the great human mysteries.  Why do we suffer?  Why does God allow suffering in our world?  These are questions people have been asking since the beginning of time.
 
Suffering is very real and very personal.  There are no simple answers.  Suffering is complex and challenging.  We often want simple and easy answers.  But there are none when it comes to suffering.  In what follows, I will try to provide some starting points for further thought and prayer, but please forgive me if anything I say comes across as if I am not taking seriously any real-life suffering you may be experiencing. My hope is that will not be the case, and that amid the suffering of this world each of us will find strength, comfort, and meaning in our faith and be willing to do the difficult work of prayer and seeking answers.
 
In order to understand the question of suffering, we need to look at three things:
· Sin and its consequences
· Can suffering have meaning?
· The Good News: The power of faith and the possibility of healing
 
Sin and its consequences: Christian revelations teaches us that what God values above all is relationship. But for relationship to be meaningful, it must be freely chosen; for it to be freely chosen, there must be the possibility of it being rejected; and wherever there is the possibility of rejecting relationship, there is also the possibility of pain and suffering.
 
The truth is that God never intended us to suffer and die.  But our first parents, Adam and Eve chose to disobey and brought death and suffering into the world. And before we go blaming Adam and Eve, we have to face the fact that we too choose to sin and act selfishly and we perpetuate the effects of sin in our world.  I think that our pride often gets into the way of our being willing to admit the truth.  God created us in freedom, in love, and we freely chose to reject His laws.  This reminds us of one of the first steps for us as Christians, that we must come to a point where we admit we are sinners and we are responsible – we must stop blaming and pointing fingers.  We, not God, not anybody else is responsible for my choices.  The truth is, once we admit our sinfulness, there is a type of healing that takes place in us. As Jesus taught, “The truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)
 
Can suffering have meaning?: There is a modern heresy in many evangelical churches today, called “the prosperity Gospel.”  These churches claim that authentically turning our lives over to Jesus immediately results in abundant health and financial prosperity. The idea seems to be that faithful Christians should never be poor or experience sickness.
 
First of all, this contradicts the Gospel.  Jesus taught, “If you want to be a disciple of mine, you must pick up your cross every day and follow me.”  He also challenged one of His potential disciples, the rich young man:  “You are lacking one thing, Go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and come follow Me.”   (Mark 10:21)
We don’t go and look for suffering, but suffering and the cross are simply a part of discipleship. The truth is, Jesus’ passion and death also gave meaning to suffering. Suffering and death were not part of God’s original plan for the world. They came along as fallout from the sin of Adam. Nevertheless, Jesus never promised to rid the world of suffering. But he did show us that suffering can be embraced and offered back to God the Father as a kind of atonement for sins and for others. 
 
St. Augustine said that God “would not allow any evil in his works, unless in his omnipotence and goodness, as the Supreme Good, he is able to bring forth good out of evil” (“On Faith, Hope, and Love,” iii, 11). Maybe the best example of this was how God took the suffering of Good Friday and brought forth the Resurrection of Easter Sunday.  God the Father’s sending of his only Son to suffer and die for our redemption shows his deep love for us. That alone should remind us (and maybe even those without a strong faith) of God’s love for mankind.
 
The Good News:  The power of faith and the possibility of healing: First, and foremost, I want to say that for believers, everyone of us will be healed.  Whenever I anoint someone with the Sacrament of the Sick, I always say: 
“Lord, help us to remember that the ultimate healing we will experience is to be with You forever in heaven.” Even for those who are healed in this life, that doesn’t remove all suffering and the other challenges of life.  Miracles and miraculous healing are signs, not ends in themselves.  They are signs of God’s love and Him revealing Himself to us.
 
Having said that, miraculous healing is wonderful and is to be welcomed.  Pope Benedict XVI, in his book, Jesus of Nazareth, writes that “Healing is an essential dimension of the apostolic mission and of Christian faith in general. It can even be said that Christianity is a ‘therapeutic religion, a religion of healing.’”
 
Let us remember, Lazarus was raised from the dead by Jesus.   But he would die again one day.  All of Jesus’ healings are signs.  They are signs of the Kingdom of God breaking in to our world, and they are signs that God does want us to be whole and know that He loves us.  So why isn’t everyone healed?  First, everyone can experience healing.  It’s just that the healing God wants for us may not be the healing that we think we should experience.  In my ministry over the years, many times people need to experience spiritual and inner healing first.  Some people have lived very dark lives.  Some have been traumatized by life through no fault of their own.  So sometimes God needs to allow us to invite Him inside of us so that we can be healed emotionally and spiritually. 
 
The truth is, this world is very broken, and sometimes our brokenness causes us to turn from God and become bitter and cynical.  How many times I’ve seen addicted people who have become so manipulative and obsessed with the need for control.  Some people give into their rebellious and sinful nature.  Remember faith is a decision, to be free means that we can freely choose to reject God.
 
In the end, only God knows, in His wisdom, His plan for our lives.  But we must choose and invite Him into our hearts.  No one can do that for us.
 
Christian author Joni Eareckson Tada struggled with this issue for a long time. As she recounts in her book, she sought physical healing of her quadriplegia. She prayed and fully believed that God would heal her. In her words, “I certainly believed. I was calling up my girlfriends saying, ‘Next time you see me I’m going to be running up your sidewalk. God’s going to heal me’” Yet Joni is still in a wheelchair today, 45 years after the accident that left her paralyzed.  God did not physically heal her. Yet, her perspective is one of great faith: “God may remove your suffering, and that will be great cause for praise. But if not, He will use it, He will use anything and everything that stands in the way of His fellowship with you. So let God mold you and make you, transform you from glory to glory. That’s the deeper healing” God will not be put into a box.


The question we need to ask in any given situation is, what does God want? Does He desire to heal the individual in this life, or does He have another plan to show His glory through weakness? Someday, all sickness and death will be eradicated.  Until then, there is a greater healing, the cleansing of sinful hearts, that God performs every day.
 
On the image of Divine Mercy are the words:  “Jesus, I trust in You.”  I want to ask all of us this question.  Do we really trust Him?  Can we love Him whether we’re healed in the way we think God should heal us?  Or is God calling us to be like Joni Tada?  One thing is sure, God is sovereign and supremely wise.
 
Our next Holy Spirit Encounter is Friday, June 7th at 7:00 pm. in our church.  I would like to invite all of you to come and be open to whatever God has in store for you.
 
God Bless,
​Fr. Dennis

The picture above is one of my favorite religious images. It’s an icon of the resurrection, specifically, of Jesus’ descent into “the place of the dead”. This is the event we remember every time we say the line in the Apostles’ Creed about Jesus “descended into hell”. After his death, Jesus went to the place where the righteous figures from the Old Testament were waiting for the Messiah to defeat sin and raise them to Heaven.
 
Notice in this icon that Jesus is clothed in the white robes of resurrection, and the robes are flowing upward, like he’s dramatically breaking through the ceiling of Hell to rescue the souls waiting there. The two people Jesus is holding onto are Adam and Eve, the people who started this whole mess in the first place.
 
When we reflect on Jesus’ passion and death we often focus on how our sins caused Jesus to suffer this way. There’s a lot of truth in this kind of reflection, the Catechism says “our sins made the Lord Christ suffer the torment of the cross” (CCC 598). However, I think we also sometimes forget that Jesus freely suffered and died because of how much he loves us. The Catechism goes on to say, “In suffering and death [Jesus’] humanity became the free and perfect instrument of his divine love which desires the salvation of men. Indeed, out of love for his Father and for men, whom the Father wants to save, Jesus freely accepted his Passion and death” (CCC 609).


Jesus didn’t become man and die on the cross in order to scold us and make us feel bad about our sins. He did all that to show us how much God loves us, how good God is. Jesus suffered through all the torture and humiliation because that’s how desperately he loved Adam and Eve...that's how desperately he loves me. The cross is a symbol of God’s goodness!
 
Go back to the icon and notice the skeleton in chains there at the bottom. This figure represents sin and death. Suffering and death are not part of God’s plan for us, rather, they are things that God allows because of our free choice to reject God and reject life. Jesus came as a conquering king. He came to bring about the Kingdom of God and to destroy sin, suffering, and death. God didn’t create these terrible things but he took them upon himself. Everything that causes us to suffer, everything that kills us, Jesus freely let kill him. Then he defeated them.


This isn’t merely an historical event. God wants to enter into every one of our deaths, into everything that kills us, whether it’s illness, suffering, depression, loneliness, etc., and transform it. And he wants to do that right now, not just after we die and go to Heaven.

God became man, God suffered on a cross, so that we may experience healing, so that we may be restored, so that we may receive the Holy Spirit, so that we may become God.  Jesus didn’t come to simply bring us back to the Garden of Eden, he came to transform us, glorify us, and share his Divine Life with us.
 
And this transformation isn’t our work, it’s God’s work. We cannot heal ourselves or make ourselves Holy, but God can. And all God asks for is our consent, our cooperation. We can stop carrying these burdens ourselves. We can stop trying to be perfect. We can stop beating ourselves up when we struggle with a habitual sin. We just have to surrender our sins and weaknesses to God and let him transform us step by step. We don’t have to convince God to love us, forgive us, heal us, or transform us. We just have to let him.
 
As we celebrate Easter, I encourage you to take a few moments and reflect on this infinite love that God has for you personally. Ask the Lord how he wants to heal you, how he wants to transform you next. Reflect on what’s keeping you from accepting that next step. Is it sin, fear, shame, or feeling unworthy of his love? Surrender all of that to the Lord and let him heal you.

I want to end by sharing a passage from the pope’s recent letter to young people. I encourage you to open your heart to our Holy Father’s words and let them settle deeply there:

“The very first truth I would tell each of you is this: ‘God loves you’. It makes no difference whether you have already heard it or not. I want to remind you of it. God loves you. Never doubt this, whatever may happen to you in life. At every moment, you are infinitely loved.
 
...For him, you have worth; you are not insignificant. You are important to him, for you are the work of his hands. That is why he is concerned about you and looks to you with affection...He does not keep track of your failings and he always helps you learn something even from your mistakes. Because he loves you. Try to keep still for a moment and let yourself feel his love. Try to silence all the noise within, and rest for a second in his loving embrace.

...The second great truth is that Christ, out of love, sacrificed himself completely in order to save you. His outstretched arms on the cross are the most telling sign that he is a friend who is willing to stop at nothing....The same Christ who, by his cross, saved us from our sins, today continues to save and redeem us by the power of his total self-surrender. Look to his cross, cling to him, let him save you, for ‘those who accept his offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness’” (Christus Vivit 112-119).
Christ is risen, truly risen. Alleluia!
Happy Easter, 
-Paul
​

As we enter Holy Week, the solemn atmosphere of Palm Sunday prepares us for the mysteries of Holy Week. We are journeying with Our Lord toward His life-giving Passion, Death, and Resurrection. The Son of God came into the world “to bear witness to the truth” (John 18:37) and “to give His life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Holy Week guides us to Golgotha and beyond—to the empty tomb.
 
Father Sergius Bulgakov wrote, “The beauty, the richness and the power of these services take possession of the soul and sweep it along as upon a mystic torrent” .
 
During Holy Week we are challenged to do our best to focus on our Lord Jesus Christ, to enter in to His life-giving mysteries which can become a source of life for us. Holy Week draws upon all our emotions, sadness, fear, contemplation and joy. Try to put aside worldly entertainments and invite some quiet and time for reflection so that you can enter deeply into Holy Week.
 
In a special and unique way during Holy Week, each one of us receives Christ as our personal Savior, and it is possible to make our own all the events of Christ’s life through personal experience, to whatever extent we can. Holy Week is a “now event” that occurred once in time but is always happening outside time. 
 
At the services of Holy Week, we enter into the “today” of the events being made present again to the saving power of God’s love. Thus, we are not simply commemorating a past event for its dramatic impact or presenting something of a passion play. Rather, the Holy Spirit makes present again the event of the Crucifixion and Resurrection. We see this in the saints who knew that Easter was not a single day of the year, but an eternal reality in which they participated daily.
 
That means that our presence at the Holy Week services confronts us with a series of choices and decisions, as it did the original participants: to be with Christ or to be with any of those who chose to crucify Him. Will our lives reveal us as imitators of the sinful but repentant woman, or as imitators of Judas the betrayer? Do we show signs of repentance or do we betray Christ in the small events of daily living? Or, perhaps like those for whom a moment of decision was at hand, we remain apathetic bystanders whose very indecisiveness keeps us distant from the company of Christ. This is essential to bear in mind precisely because we are referring to actual, concrete historical events that occurred at a particular place in time among a particular people. As we contemplate the harsh realities of a fallen and sinful world that is even capable of putting Christ to death, we need to mourn human corruption as it even tempts us within our institutions and within our hearts today. Would any one of us have stepped forward to defend Christ when unjustly condemned, or would our own passivity and fear have left Him just as alone and isolated today as during the end of His earthly ministry? Yet, God was “working” throughout this unbearable human drama to fulfill His will for our eternal salvation. Christ was not the victim of an unjust verdict, but the Victor who was fulfilling His vocation as the Suffering Servant who would be vindicated by Easter Sunday. Just as Saint Peter was forgiven his weakness and restored to fellowship with his Lord, so are we today, by the grace of God so abundantly poured out for us this Holy Week.
 
God bless,
Fr. Dennis