Bound in Love

Father Neil preached last week on suffering and gratitude, and I would like to continue to look at those today. Both suffering and gratitude are at the heart of the crucifix. We call it a crucifix because it is a cross with the body of Jesus attached to it. The crucifix is supposed to be placed centrally in every Catholic Church. The Mass, which the Second Vatican Council called the source and the summit of our faith, is at its heart a reflection on the Crucifixion. In the Mass, we are mysteriously present at the foot of the Cross while Jesus offers his own life for our redemption. In an equally mysterious way, we are simultaneously present at the heavenly banquet that continues outside of time and was shown to the Apostle John in his vision we get from the book of Revelation.

The heart of our faith is the mystery of the Cross. The Cross necessarily involves suffering. It is equally true, however, that the Cross is at the heart of our gratitude. The Greek word for what we call the Mass is “eucharistia.” That word is generally translated into English as thanksgiving. So, the heart of our worship is a combination of suffering and thanksgiving, of suffering and gratitude. How can that be?

It can be because God has a plan for all of us and for each of us, and his plan is good, and we are all — and individually — invited to trust his plan. Put more simply, God has a plan, it is a good plan, and I trust the plan.

So what is God’s plan? God’s plan is revealed in the Cross: he sent his only son to die on the Cross and rise from death three days later to give everyone who believes in him the chance for everlasting life.

God’s plan works out in our lives according to how much we understand that it is a good plan, and how much we cooperate with the plan because we trust the plan. God gave us freedom. In our freedom, we are free to distrust him and to ignore or fight against his plan for us. He makes the offer, but he won’t force himself upon us. We have to cooperate with him. He makes the invitation; we do the implementation.

The whole of salvation history as recorded in the Scriptures is the story of God’s plan and our reaction to his plan. Because we don’t have his knowledge and his power, we have some times in history jumped to conclusions that were wrong. The Israelites jumped to the conclusion that God’s plan was focused on their nation and would come to fruition on the human and political level. So when God sent his Son to die on Good Friday, many of the Jews could not believe this really was God’s plan, or they thought it was a terrible plan, and in the end they didn’t trust the plan.

That pattern didn’t stop after Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit had come and the Church began to grow. Throughout the history of the Church, people have struggled to believe that what they are experiencing is truly part of God’s plan. There is a lot of suffering in God’s plan, and we don’t like suffering. Suffering involves real pain; sometimes the pain is physical but passes, like broken bones from a car wreck; sometimes it is physical and chronic, like rheumatoid arthritis. Sometimes the pain is mental and emotional, like depression and loneliness. Sometimes it is spiritual, what the mystical saints called the dark night of the spirit.

But if we look at the Cross, we can see that suffering often is part of God’s plan. Jesus suffered in the garden of Gethsemane the night before his passion. St. Luke tells us that he was in such mental and emotional pain that he sweated blood. The Gospels recount his prayer to his father that this cup might not pass his lips, that he might not have to drink from this chalice. In the physical suffering of the scourging at the pillar and the crowning of thorns, followed by the slow and painful death on the Cross, it is shown to us that Jesus experienced all of the possible ways to suffer.

The heart of our faith is the mystery of the crucifixion, and suffering is at the heart of the crucifixion. So, suffering is an unavoidable problem for orthodox Catholic Christians.

But Christianity is not simply perseverance through suffering. It’s not some kind of a guts club in which we compete to see who can take more of what life dishes out. For gratitude is also at the heart of the Crucifixion and at the heart of our faith. God doesn’t need anything from us; Father Neil made this point emphatically. Everything good in our lives comes from God. God only gives us good things. So we can be grateful every single day. We can even be grateful in the middle of suffering. That is the lesson Job is learning in the reading today. If we are truly open to God’s plan, we can even be grateful for suffering.

Gratitude for suffering is in many ways the path to heaven. Gratitude implies there is power in the other party. Gratitude implies recognition of goodness given. Gratitude is a direct stepping stone to humility. When we are thankful for the trials in our lives, we are believing that God does have a plan, that it’s a good plan, and we trust the plan. It is a grace when we can be thankful right in the middle of our suffering. Many times we only see God’s plan in the rearview mirror. That doesn’t make his plan less good. It just reinforces the invitation to trust him more.

All of us have had difficult things happen to us in our lives. I don’t know a single person who had a great experience in middle school, high school and college. Almost everyone had a difficult stretch in those times, but almost everyone managed to get through them. And for most of us, we grew mentally, emotionally, and spiritually through those difficult stretches in the early part of our lives. And that pattern continues for the rest of our lives. If you lost your job through no fault of your own, that is suffering. In many cases, however, we can look back and realize that it was only through that experience that we were able to get the better job afterward. God has a plan, it’s a good plan, and we can trust the plan.

Consider the Apostles in the boat dealing with rough seas while Jesus takes a nap on a pillow. They are suffering from fear, and they do not see God’s plan as a good plan, and they are not trusting Him at all. Suffering has the same effect on them it has on us: it makes us whine and complain. The disciples rebuke the Living God because they are suffering. 

After he calms the wind, he chastises the disciples for their lack of faith. On Good Friday, Jesus shows them what true suffering looks like, but he continues to trust in his Heavenly Father’s plan all the way to the end. Suffering only makes sense in the Cross.

The Cross and Resurrection perfects and brings to glorious conclusion all that suffering. Through the Cross, Jesus has redeemed us and offers us a pathway to Heaven. Our new stained glass window shows Jesus as Christ the King seated on his Heavenly throne. The Cross was the way to Heaven. The gift of the Cross, and the gift of the Eucharist, is the gift of eternal life. The Mass is our expression of gratitude to God for his gift. Gratitude, therefore, ultimately is from and to the Cross.

The seas of our lives may toss and turn and frighten us. Even then, we should remember: God has a plan. It’s a good plan. I trust the plan.