Tuesday February 25, 2003 Homily by Fr. Robert Altier Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
Reading (Sirach 2:1-11) Gospel (St. Mark 9:30-37)
In the readings
today, we hear some things that most of us probably do not really like to hear,
that is, “When you come to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for trials.” It
goes on from there and talks about what happens in times of adversity and that
whatever befalls you be steadfast and even in crushing misfortune be patient
and how people are tested in the crucible like silver and gold, all these
things that are spoken very clearly. It is not the way that we normally think
of things when it comes time to serve the Lord. Again, we see how in our
society we have been affected very much by the Protestant foundation of America
where we are told that God does not want anybody to suffer and that if you
suffer it is because you have done something wrong: “It must be your fault; you
have sinned. You did something that made God angry.” That is exactly the
opposite of what Scripture says. There are times indeed when it is our own sins
that bring about some of our suffering, but God purifies those who want to
serve Him and that purification is a very, very painful thing. So when we see,
for instance, the disciples arguing about who is the greatest, the Lord tells
them that the one who is the least is the greatest, the one who becomes the
servant of the others is the greatest. Not the way the world looks at things
does the Lord see things, and we need to look at things as the Lord sees them.
Now, as Sirach goes
on, he asks questions like, “Who has ever hoped in the Lord and been
disappointed? Who has ever persevered and been forsaken?” and I suspect that in
all of our lives we can look back and say, “I have.” There are times when
things are not going very well in our lives and we are being crushed beyond our
strength and we can say, “I’ve been disappointed. I asked the Lord to help me
and He didn’t.” Yet if we really stopped to look at what the Lord did, He maybe
did not take away our suffering, but the reason for that is because it was
there for a different reason; it was there as a purification and certainly,
then, He is not going to take it away. That would be like a student in school
praying that the Lord would just simply let him graduate today because he just
cannot take this any longer. Well, the kid has to make it all the way through
school before he is going to graduate. And the same is true of us. If God is
going to bring us through the crucible of suffering, He is not going to take it
away simply because we do not like it. And sometimes we feel, then, like He is
not answering our prayers, that He has abandoned us, that He does not like us,
whatever thoughts come into our head about what we think God is doing.
But all we need to
do in the midst of these things is look at the Cross. First of all, Jesus did
nothing that was sinful; He did not bring any of this upon Himself. He tells us
in the Gospel that the Son of Man will have to be handed over and be put to
death. So, once again, it looks like He has been forsaken. It looks like He
ought to be disappointed; certainly, the disciples were – the only person who
wasn’t was Our Lady. But the disciples did not understand and they were
disappointed and their faith was shaken by what they saw. Then comes the Resurrection,
and only then do we understand that in fact God did not forsake the Lord and
the disciples were not disappointed any longer. But that took a while for that
to happen, just like in our lives. When we say, “Oh yes, I’ve been disappointed
because the Lord didn’t answer my prayer,” and we persevere for a little while
longer then all of a sudden we find that we were not abandoned or forsaken,
that the Lord in fact was there, and that He was allowing this to bring about a
greater good. Our momentary disappointment actually becomes a very long-term
joy.
And so what we need
to do is exactly what we are told in Scripture: to prepare ourselves for the
suffering. The nice thing is, as Christian people, we have hope in suffering.
We can unite our suffering to that of Christ and it actually becomes His
suffering. There is a purpose for it. We can offer it for other people and
share in the work of salvation. And so we see then that suffering has great
dignity, exactly the opposite of what our society tells us. We need to learn to
look at things with the eyes of faith, but in the midst of great suffering that
is almost impossible until one achieves a rather high level of holiness. It is
easy when you are not suffering to see the dignity of it and to tell somebody else
the goodness of it. When you are going through it, it is hard to see;
everything is dark, crushing, and very painful. Things do not work the way they
normally do in the mind and it is easy to forget. So we need to keep reminding
ourselves and we need to keep the Cross of Our Lord before us and to have that
constant reminder of the value of suffering and why it is critically important,
not only for ourselves to be purified and to be perfected and for growth in
holiness, but for the good of others, for the salvation of souls, and the
redemption of the world.
* This text was
transcribed from the audio recording of a homily by Father Robert Altier with minimal editing.