12th Sunday after Pentecost 11.8.13
A former Australian Prime Minister stated in answering a question that ‘Life wasn’t meant to be easy’.
This expresses the kind of realistic pessimism which characterises so much of our world view. We do not expect things to be easy; nor to go overly well. We brace ourselves for disappointments. We take it as routine that a fair amount of what we hope for will just not happen; that a certain amount of suffering is inevitable.
The statement itself, however, can be taken different ways.
In the original state of things Life was meant to be easy. If Adam and Eve had obeyed God’s commands they (and we) would still be in the Garden of Eden, where there would be no difficulty of any kind, no suffering, no disappointment, neither sickness nor death.
However, as sin has intervened, the whole situation has changed. And from that point on it is true to say that Life was not meant to be easy. Though we say this, not from a fatalistic point of view but from seeing, in the plan of God, that suffering is a necessary component of restoring creation to its original purpose.
Take up your cross daily, and follow Me, says Our Lord. He sets the tone. He did not find life on earth easy, taking on Himself the sins of the world. And He asks us, as His disciples, to take some share (a much smaller one) in the same process.
All this suffering is meant to make life easy again. We suffer only until things get back on the rails; till once again the human race is in union with God. Then we would be able to relax and enjoy life without any shadow. An earthly paradise - theoretically possible, at least. In any event Heaven is such a paradise.
It is not just random bad luck that we suffer so much. It is because, firstly, we have not obeyed our Creator and Saviour. And, secondly, we suffer to get things back into place.
We feel like the man on the side of the road (Good Samaritan parable). We have been robbed by the devil of our true heritage. We should not be in this position, but we are anyway.
What to do about it? We hope that someone comes along and helps us. Someone has come. Our Lord Himself stops to help us, and put us back on our feet.
We have all been robbed (original sin) but not all equally grasp the rescue (Baptism). We who have been baptized have been rescued and are in a better position to understand.
Gradually the hope dawns on us that this world, despite all its difficulty, can once again be a place of beauty, where every person and thing is in union with God’s will.
We do not complain about our ‘bad luck’, but keep focused on the road to recovery.
The closer we come to God the better everything starts to look (at least in potential).
And we ourselves change in the process. The more we let the Good Samaritan heal us the more we become like Him - able to be Good Samaritans ourselves.
The more rescued we feel the more we want to offer the same freedom to others.
We offer them the joy of the discovery we have made – that life was meant to be easy, and will be again, if only we turn to the source of all goodness and beauty. To give people hope is better than giving them food and medicine etc.
Even if the world does not improve we can establish for ourselves an interior life whereby we live by the rules of the kingdom. And enjoy inner peace in the process.
We will not allow ourselves to be robbed again. We will re-claim the life and the kind of life that Almighty God always wanted us to have.
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