A very lenty post .....during Christmas.

     I know it's still the middle of the Christmas season, but I've got a post with a bit of a lenty feel for you.  

    A few of you who I manage to keep in touch with personally know that there has been a big dark cloud of medical mystery hovering over someone in the household for a few years.  Things have gotten worse in the last year and a half or so, and we never really know whether each day will be peaceful or painful.  Either way, the days have not been easy and light in the past few years.  It HAS been easy to be discouraged and wonder why God doesn't lift the suffering.  It's one thing to ponder the problem of evil from a theological perspective, but quite another to stare it in the face.  

    Tonight, whilst doing the dishes and wallowing in a tiny bit of self-pity because of letting myself get disappointed during the Christmas season, something clicked.  It's always interesting when things that you have knowledge of in your brain suddenly become things that you have knowledge of in your heart and soul.  I think Christopher West calls it the "6-inch drop" from head to heart.

    We usually pray our rosary along with scripture every night as a family.  There's this youtube video we pray along with that has a really short scripture verse for every Hail Mary in the Rosary.  It's a nice aid to help us meditate on the mysteries.  Tonight, being Friday, we prayed the Sorrowful Mysteries.  During the Agony in the Garden, part of the passage that was read from Luke 22 said, "He prayed more earnestly".  I thought to myself, Jesus had to pray harder?  I mean at that point he had already prayed to God the Father asking Him to take away the cup of suffering.  But the cup still wasn't taken away.  I had never really thought deeply about Jesus having to pray several times and praying harder.

    

Usually when I teach Theology of the Body, there's a decent discussion about the Fatherhood of God in the garden of Eden and how the serpent is bent on destroying humanity's trust in God, the good and loving Father.  I usually emphasize how God is a good Father, and this is one of the truths that we're supposed to take from reading Genesis and the story of Creation and the Fall.  Unlike Adam and Eve, we're supposed to trust and be obedient to the will of God the Father.

    Sometimes when you're faced with the consequences of sin in the world and real-life suffering it's tempting to doubt God's goodness.  It's tempting to listen to the voice of the serpent who insinuates, "Is he really a good Father?"  I mean look, he didn't even save His only Son from the most excruciating and humiliating suffering of all time.  Why?  Why didn't he grant the request of the most perfect, most holy, most good, most obedient Son of all time?  

    Redemption.  Salvation.  That's why.  

    God the Father had bigger plans.  Jesus' suffering, death, and resurrection meant something and was efficacious.  The cup of suffering and death won redemption for us all.  It paid the punishment of the sin from the Garden of Eden.

    So as I look at my loved one suffering day after day, I have to hope that that suffering is also being allowed because of Redemption.  Who knows which souls are being helped by that suffering?  Maybe it's mine, maybe it's the kids, maybe it's the soul of some random struggling person on the other side of the world.  One of the truths that we're taught as Catholics is that we participate with Christ in redemption through our own sufferings, if we offer them to Him.  It reminds me of Mother Teresa's quote, "If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other,".  

    We're all connected in the body of Christ.   

    God has a plan.  God is good.  Jesus is with us.  Glory to God in the Highest!

    Anyways, I'm sure all of you already know this, I just like to write when things click in my soul.        

    Merry Christmas everyone!  Please keep us in your prayers, you are in ours.