Fifteenth Sunday of the Year

Sunday 15A

There are all types of crosses and suffering in life, psychological, physical, emotional and spiritual. Some crosses are the result of our own foolishness, others are beyond our control or we share in the suffering of others. We see all too often the suffering of mental illness, of addiction, of physical suffering.

No-one escapes suffering in this life – the truth is that we can run but we can’t hide.

There is for each one of us the cross of daily duty – of the sacrifices required of us through our calling in life, of our earning our daily bread, of our putting in the effort required of us, without slacking off, out of a sense of responsibility to others. It can be monotonous drudgery, seemingly unrewarding relentless effort on a bad day. There is the burden of the various stages of life we will inevitably experience.

Then there are the crosses of other people in our lives including the inconveniences that others place on us through their characters and personalities, the unreasonableness of others who are completely unaware of it themselves, the people we try to avoid, hoping they haven’t seen us!

But for all my whinging once a while I get a wake-up call, that puts me back in my box as it were, when I see a child in a wheelchair, or someone shuffling along in a walking stick, slowed by the passage of years. Or from time to time having to go to an A & E ward and then when I can walk out, passing by the tired faces of those waiting to be seen, with anxious loved ones, I ask myself how I can be so caught up in myself and my own worries. I recall the cross of a sick child - I remember anointing a child who still had a dummy in her mouth who held her hands out to be anointed - who due to defective kidneys had already been to hospital for 37 operations. I remember the Redemptorists used to visits from time to time our parish for a Parish Mission; being hugely impressed by the petition box. People weren’t named, but their petitions were called out – it opened my eyes to the suffering and problems of others, when I got so caught up in my own.

 ‘I think that the sufferings of the present time are not worth comparing with the joy/glory that awaits us.’ (St Paul, Second Reading)

This is our hope – this is the hope that Christianity offers, that suffering is, despite all its awfulness, temporary. Every hardship of this life patiently borne for the sake of Christ, gives way to the promise of eternal life. The unimaginable happiness of heaven eclipses the sufferings of this world.

God gave us His answer – in the cross, the crucifix. In the Catholic tradition there is no shortage but rather a great variety in meditating on Christ’s suffering that helps to bring meaning to ours. How often I have found comfort there in prayer, or meditating on the Stations of the Cross, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady, the Sacred Wounds or Precious Blood, the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, meditating on Gethsemane in a Holy Hour.

Can I pray this week bringing my cross or the crosses of others before the Cross of Christ? Emerging from mediaiitng on the Word of God in prayer can I be more sensitive to the sufferings of others?

Can I then bring hope, help or strength to alleviate others or can I at least listen more patiently - this week, more consciously aware myself and bringing others to the awareness that ‘the sufferings of the present time are not worth comparing with the glory that awaits us.’ (Romans 8:18)

This is a concrete example of how the Word of God, in a single sentence that states, ‘I think that the sufferings of the present time are not worth comparing with the joy/glory that awaits us’ symbolised by the seed, and watered by prayer, bears fruit and brings forth a harvest in my life and the lives of others, ‘so the word that goes from my mouth does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and succeeding in what it was sent to do.’(Isaiah 55:11)

‘And the one who received the seed in rich soil is the man who hears the word and understands it; he is the one who yields a harvest and produces now a hundredfold, now sixty, now thirty’ (Mt. 13:9)