Well first of all, I really must apologize yet again for my gross negligence. I was inspired to emerge once again from my blog-guilt by today's saint, St. Lawrence.
St. Lawrence was one of the first deacons and was brutally martyred by being roasted alive. But this is why I love him: while he's being roasted, as legend has it, he taunted his torturers with the words, "Turn me over, I'm done on this side." WHILE HE'S BEING ROASTED ALIVE. You see what I'm saying? How can you not love this guy?
I dare say, I think we could use a good dose of the spirit of St. Lawrence in our own day and age. This type of in-your-face/do-your-worst/does-it-look-like-I-care? approach to suffering is something that could do us all good (myself foremost!).
I recently heard a talk by an exorcist in which he describes the ways in which certain demons affect certain generations. Previous generations knew what it was like to truly suffer, just to stay alive and earn a daily living. Nowadays, we are so embarrassingly spoiled that when our phone reception is bad, we think it's the end of the world. This type of habitual self-indulgence, so the exorcist says, makes it easier for us to move away from God. And moving away from God makes it easier for demons to move in.
The remedy? To embrace suffering and self-denial. This doesn't mean that we become masochists or go through life with rose-colored glasses, naively oblivious to the reality of pain and suffering. But only by uniting our suffering to that of Christ can we find any meaning or peace in it at all. I dare say there were probably many people who looked at this man dying on a cross and thought, "What a sad and pointless death." We can go through life approaching our own suffering in the same way. And that's when the suffering can overwhelm us.
But through His suffering and death, the entire world is saved and the joy of humanity is restored. It is only when we unite our suffering to His that we can find our own salvation from the suffering, our own joy from the pain. If we surrender our suffering to God, rather than run from it, it loses it's power. The more we try to control it or run from it, the more it rules us. No, its not going to magically go away as soon as you turn to Jesus. But you can still have peace despite the suffering. It can lose its grip on you, as indeed it had no grip at all over St. Lawrence.
So stop running from pain (or even mild discomfort). Jesus wants to meet you in your suffering, to remind you that you are never alone. So don't be afraid. Be like St. Lawrence. And when suffering comes your way, tell it to turn you over.
Pax Vobiscum
