{"id":185,"date":"2011-09-15T10:33:43","date_gmt":"2011-09-15T15:33:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/?p=185"},"modified":"2011-09-15T10:33:43","modified_gmt":"2011-09-15T15:33:43","slug":"obedience-through-suffering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/?p=185","title":{"rendered":"Obedience Through Suffering"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Our Lady of Sorrows<\/o:o:p><\/span><\/h2>\n

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Heb 5: 7-9; <\/span>Lk 2: 33-35<\/o:o:p><\/span><\/h2>\n

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Dc. Larry Brockman<\/o:o:p><\/h2>\n

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Suppose that at the Baptism of your Child or Grandchild, the priest or deacon had said:\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cYour child is destined for the rise and fall of many in this country.\u00a0 <\/span>He will stand for a cause that will be contradicted, and you will feel like a sword has pierced your heart.\u201d.\u00a0 <\/span>Wow! That would be a pretty heavy prophecy; and pretty hard on you.\u00a0 <\/span>Well, that\u2019s what Mary and Joseph heard when Jesus was presented to the temple.\u00a0 <\/span>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.\u00a0 <\/span>But now this- a prophecy that had to make Jesus\u2019 parents very sad.\u00a0 <\/span><\/o:o:p><\/font><\/p>\n

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And then there is our first reading.\u00a0 <\/span>We hear how Jesus, the Son of God, prayed to His Father, and although He was heard, even so Jesus had to suffer.\u00a0 <\/span>Paul says that it was through that suffering that Jesus learned obedience.\u00a0 <\/span><\/o:o:p><\/font><\/p>\n

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Now we know that Mary, and certainly Jesus, led ideal lives in the eyes of God the Father.\u00a0 <\/span>And yet, these most perfect of humans suffered- both of them.\u00a0 <\/span>And that suffering was a combination of both mental and physical suffering.\u00a0 <\/span>In both cases, they learned to be obedient even in the face of suffering.\u00a0 <\/span>It was not a self-inflicted suffering; but rather, it was the suffering that results from being obedient to the will of God. <\/o:o:p><\/font><\/p>\n

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It seems to me that all of us need to learn the same lesson.\u00a0 <\/span>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.\u00a0 <\/span>Some of us have limitations- handicaps of some kind;\u00a0 <\/span>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.\u00a0 <\/span>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,\u00a0 <\/span>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. \u00a0<\/span><\/o:o:p><\/font><\/p>\n

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This summer I met a man who was an avid skydiver.\u00a0 <\/span>He also didn\u2019t believe in God.\u00a0 <\/span>He told me that 8 years ago, he had a dreadful motorcycle accident and broke his back in multiple places.\u00a0 <\/span>He was in the hospital for a year.\u00a0 <\/span>He had devoted his life since to physical rehabilitation so that he could ride that motorcycle again and go skydiving.\u00a0 <\/span>He was quite proud of himself because he succeeded and is now doing both.\u00a0 <\/span>But I wonder.\u00a0 <\/span>God gave him another chance- a wake-up call, if you will, a chance to learn from his suffering to be aware of God\u2019s presence in his life so he could be obedient to the will of God.\u00a0 <\/span>And yet, this man has devoted his life to things of this world, determined to \u201cbeat the rap\u201d and do what he wanted in this world.\u00a0 <\/span>And he is even blind to the role God plays in his life.\u00a0 <\/span><\/o:o:p><\/font><\/p>\n

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Today, on the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, let us resolve not to be blind to our suffering;\u00a0 <\/span>but rather, to learn from it to be obedient to the will of God.\u00a0 <\/span><\/o:o:p><\/font><\/p>\n

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Our Lady of Sorrows Heb 5: 7-9; Lk 2: 33-35 Dc. Larry Brockman \u00a0 Suppose that at the Baptism of your Child or Grandchild, the priest or deacon had said:\u00a0 \u201cYour child is destined for the rise and fall of many in this country.\u00a0 He will stand for a cause that will be contradicted, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[66],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}