29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
First Reading: Is 53:10-11
Second Reading: Heb 4:14-16
Gospel Reading: Mk 10:35-45
This Sunday’s Readings speak of suffering, especially the suffering that is the consequence of sin and, paradoxically, is the remedy for sin.
As C.S. Lewis shows, suffering “is inherent in the very existence of a world where souls can meet” (The Problem of Pain). We can expect, then, to find it built into the world God gives us to enter into love with him.
“We must think of love as suffering,” says Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. To say yes to love is to risk suffering, for “love means being dependent on something that perhaps can be taken away from me.” To say no to love is to decide that rather than “bear this risk,” see “my self-determination limited,” or “depend on something I cannot control,” I would “rather not have love.”
In love, the Pope says, “I cannot simply remain myself; I always have to lose myself,” to have “my rough edges taken off,” to allow myself to be “hurt.”
(Paradoxically, he adds, losing myself means finding myself, for love, “precisely with the risk of suffering,” brings me to myself and makes me what I should be.)
“Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken,” says Lewis. “If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.
“But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”
Even in hell, we do not escape suffering, for there a created being “is obliged by one stronger than himself to be what he does not consent to be—that is, dependent on God,” says Father Raniero Cantalamessa, “and his eternal torment is that he cannot get rid of either God or himself.”
Now the love to which God calls us – the love among the Persons of the Holy Trinity – means not just losing myself, but giving myself: making “that total gift of self that the three divine Persons make to one another,” says Pope St. John Paul II.
“Gift of self” is a phrase the Pope used repeatedly. It implies an exchange of persons, not just goods. For example, Pope St. Paul VI said, “whoever truly loves his marriage partner loves not only for what he receives, but for the partner’s self, rejoicing that he can enrich his partner with the gift of himself.”
We have good reason to love God for his gifts, but he wants us to love him for himself, putting him before all his other gifts and even suffering their loss for love of him.
However, we are like children who cannot see the giver because we are distracted by his gifts. God, therefore, deals with us as his children. Our suffering is his “discipline.” We submit to the discipline of our earthly parents; how much more should we submit to his!
It is hard for us to be deprived of goods we have worked for. But God knows that they will not satisfy us, and that if we do not learn to prefer him we will be wretched. And therefore he troubles us, warning us of an insufficiency that one day we will have to discover, says Lewis.
No one can escape suffering, for it is linked to our human limitations, and, above all, to moral evil, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Christian Science affirms that evil is not real; Buddhism teaches that we can simply refuse to experience it; but Christians believe that God works within it.
Father Hawkswell is again teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English in both written and YouTube form at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. Session 5, available on YouTube starting Oct. 17, is “What is the Catholic Church?”