2nd Sunday of Lent 8.3.09 Love and pain
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as the saying goes. The Transfiguration brings home to us the sharp contrasts between the positive and negative ends of our destiny. We are destined for heaven or hell, for great happiness or great misery. We might settle for an in-between but there is not one on offer. It must be all or nothing.
It is ironic that the more seriously we become Our Lord’s disciples the more we are likely to suffer, but then again much greater will be the reward.
Also if we do not commit ourselves for fear of suffering He may reject us altogether.
So we really have to pitch in as far as we can.
Our Lord committed Himself fully and expects us to follow His example.
All the while He assures us that He will be with us to ease the pain and to receive us into blissful reward when the battle is over.
The thing for us to do is to readjust our sights. Don’t look down, they say, if you are afraid of heights. Well, don’t look at the suffering if we are afraid to suffer, but look rather at the good we are trying to achieve.
Look above all at Jesus Himself and simply be with Him, whether He is on the Cross or in Glory.
St John of the Cross says: many there are who want the garden of glory but few there are who are prepared to go through the thickets of suffering.
We all want heaven, but we want it on a plate, home delivered.
The suffering is really just a by-product. The question is not how much would you be prepared to suffer, but how much do you love? It is something like marriage where a person commits to marriage, knowing there will be sufferings, but is more interested in the love for the other person. A true lover will scale any height, swim any depth, as all the songs say.
Or, think of it this way. If someone you love has a serious accident and is in the intensive care unit, unable to talk or move. What do you do? You stay there with him. Just the same with Christ. He is suffering on the Cross. You stay with Him. You do not ask why; it just seems the natural thing to do.
Love makes pain bearable. We stay with Christ in His suffering. He stays with us in ours.
It was necessary for Him to suffer for the sins of the world. It is necessary for us to suffer to be free of our own personal sins. It is painful for us to readjust our way of living to the new way He reveals to us. Bad habits are hard to kill; old attachments are hard to shed. But if we allow His grace to set us free we begin the new and glorious life to be continued in eternity.
To prove that love is stronger than death we have the example of the martyrs. They went to painful deaths with singing and rejoicing. How can you rejoice to be eaten by a lion, burnt alive, or cut into pieces? Only if the power of love is greater than the pain. And it can be. Even in ordinary life people forget their normal fears when there is a crisis on, for example running into a burning building to save a child. Love will enable sacrifice and take its pain away.
It was love which motivated Our Lord’s sacrifice and which made it bearable in spite of all the suffering. That same love will sustain us until we also are transfigured in glory.
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