Obedience Through Suffering

Our Lady of Sorrows

Heb 5: 7-9; Lk 2: 33-35

Dc. Larry Brockman

 

Suppose that at the Baptism of your Child or Grandchild, the priest or deacon had said:  “Your child is destined for the rise and fall of many in this country.  He will stand for a cause that will be contradicted, and you will feel like a sword has pierced your heart.”.  Wow! That would be a pretty heavy prophecy; and pretty hard on you.  Well, that’s what Mary and Joseph heard when Jesus was presented to the temple.  Both of them had been visited by the angel Gabriel and told how Mary would have a child and then Gabriel had promised great things- the birth of the Son of God- the savior, the anointed one, the Christ.  But now this- a prophecy that had to make Jesus’ parents very sad. 

 

And then there is our first reading.  We hear how Jesus, the Son of God, prayed to His Father, and although He was heard, even so Jesus had to suffer.  Paul says that it was through that suffering that Jesus learned obedience. 

 

Now we know that Mary, and certainly Jesus, led ideal lives in the eyes of God the Father.  And yet, these most perfect of humans suffered- both of them.  And that suffering was a combination of both mental and physical suffering.  In both cases, they learned to be obedient even in the face of suffering.  It was not a self-inflicted suffering; but rather, it was the suffering that results from being obedient to the will of God.

 

It seems to me that all of us need to learn the same lesson.  All of us are born with a cross to bear- something that it is an integral part of our journey to salvation, something that we suffer with through no fault of our own.  Some of us have limitations- handicaps of some kind;  some of us are not gifted athletes; some of us are not the best looking; some of us are as not brilliant; and the list goes on and on.  But each of us is unique and that means that along with whatever limitations we have that are uncomfortable to us, and indeed, cause us suffering,  we have some kind of special gift or gifts- a talent, a feature, maybe even just a gift of time, that others may not have, because God loves each of us equally, and has chosen those gifts for us.  

 

This summer I met a man who was an avid skydiver.  He also didn’t believe in God.  He told me that 8 years ago, he had a dreadful motorcycle accident and broke his back in multiple places.  He was in the hospital for a year.  He had devoted his life since to physical rehabilitation so that he could ride that motorcycle again and go skydiving.  He was quite proud of himself because he succeeded and is now doing both.  But I wonder.  God gave him another chance- a wake-up call, if you will, a chance to learn from his suffering to be aware of God’s presence in his life so he could be obedient to the will of God.  And yet, this man has devoted his life to things of this world, determined to “beat the rap” and do what he wanted in this world.  And he is even blind to the role God plays in his life. 

 

Today, on the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, let us resolve not to be blind to our suffering;  but rather, to learn from it to be obedient to the will of God. 

Tags:

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.