“Suffering and Giving Glory to God” - 7th Sunday Easter (A) – 5.21.23

“Suffering and Giving Glory to God”

By: Fr. David Schmidt

Sacred Heart Church (Regina Coeli Parish) - Emsworth, PA

Mass Readings - https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/052123-Sunday.cfm

Something that we hear a lot when it comes to the faith is this notion of giving glory to God. Why is this the case? Why is it so important? What does it even mean to give God glory and how do we do this?

The reason giving glory to God is important is because all of heaven and earth is meant to give glory to God. He is the Creator of the Universe. The King of Kings. The Lord of Lords. He is the One who is all-merciful and all-loving. The One who brought each one of us into existence. Every creature, along with the entire universe reaches its fulfillment when we give glory to God. This is literally what we were made for.

God desires to be glorified because God is all that is Good, True, and Beautiful. He is Goodness Himself. And the Good deserves to be glorified. As the Good, He is also all that is Beautiful and True. It is in the nature of the Good, True, and Beautiful to be glorified. The Good, True, and Beautiful are to be raised up and proclaimed to the ends of the universe.

Because God is Good, He desires for all His creation to share in His Goodness. God doesn’t need creation to glorify Him. But it is for our own good that we are to give Him glory as well as to share in it.

Again, all of heaven and earth gives glory to God. From the angels and saints in heaven, to the stars in the sky, to the birds in the air, to the animals on the earth, to the trees and rocks on the ground, and everything in between. They give glory to God by being exactly what they were created to be.

Even more so, we as human beings are called to give glory to God in a unique way. We have a greater responsibility and ability to give glory to God because we are made in the very image and likeness of God.

So now we can ask the question- how do we give glory to God? The perfect example on how to give glory to God is God Himself in the person of Jesus Christ.

In today’s Gospel Jesus shows us how to give glory to God. In the Gospel passage He is praying to the Father and He says, “Father, the hour has come. Give glory to your son, so that your son may glorify you…” Later, He says, “I glorified you on earth by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do.”

Jesus says that the hour has come. What is this hour that has come in which His glory is to be revealed? – it is the hour of Christ’s Passion and Death on the Cross. This Gospel passage is from John 17 which is right in the middle of what is called the Book of Glory in John’s Gospel which goes from John 13-19. John 13 begins with Jesus washing the feet of His disciples at the Last Supper and the end of the book of Glory comes at the end of John Ch. 19 which is Jesus being laid in the tomb.

John 17 is called the ‘high priestly prayer’ of Jesus, as Jesus prays this prayer to the Father right before He is about to undergo His suffering and death. This is the work that Jesus has come to do in which He gives glory to God the Father. All His works up to this point were to build up to His greatest work- His death on the Cross for the salvation of souls. Everything about His life pointed to this moment on Calvary. His birth, His hidden life in Nazareth. His Baptism. His public ministry. His calling of the first Apostles. His teachings. His witness. His love. His miracles. His healings. In all of these works He gave glory to God the Father, and all of these works pointed to Calvary and what He was to accomplish on the Cross for the salvation of the world.

It was Jesus’ suffering and death on the Cross that allowed Him to reveal the glory of God the Father while He was here on the earth. And it is because of what He did for us on the Cross, and in rising from the dead, that we now await for the fullness of God’s glory to be revealed at the end of time.

So we raise the question again – how are we to give glory to God as Jesus did? We give glory to God by accomplishing the work that God gives us to do. Specifically, the work of sharing in the suffering and death of Jesus Christ.

In the 2nd reading, we hear from the 1st letter of St. Peter where he says, “Rejoice to the extent that you share in the sufferings of Christ, so that when his glory is revealed you may also rejoice exultantly.” If we want to share in Christ’s glory. We must also share in His sufferings. For it is by sharing in the sufferings of Christ that we draw close to Him, and it is only by drawing close to Him that we are able to experience the fullness of His glory.

St. Mother Teresa once said – “Pain and suffering have come into your life, but remember pain, sorrow, suffering are but the kiss of Jesus – a sign that you have come so close to Him that He can kiss you.”

All of us have experienced suffering in our lives to a certain degree. The suffering that we endure in our lives can be crippling and severely painful. We wonder where God is at when we suffer. We question why He would let us suffer in this way. However, today, we hear the beautiful truth that it is in our sufferings that we are closest to the Lord, and He is closest to us. So close in fact that He can kiss us.

What is this kiss of Jesus from the Cross? It is the Holy Spirit. In the very first lines of the Song of Songs it says, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.” The kisses from the mouth of Jesus is the Holy Spirit, the bond of love between the Father and Son. And the only way that we can receive this gift of the Holy Spirit, and give glory to God, is through our sharing in the sufferings of Christ.

Our sufferings bring us so intimately close with our Lord. When we share in the sufferings of Jesus, we bring Him comfort and consolation. Often times it is through a common experience of suffering that creates deeper intimacy between people. We think of a husband and wife who experience various sufferings together throughout their life and how that shared suffering brings them closer together in a way that nothing else could. Or a community who suffers a tragedy and the community comes together in a more powerful way because of the suffering that they shared together.

Christ wants nothing more than to draw us close to Himself. He wants nothing more than to have a deep and intimate relationship with each one of us. In the great mystery of His Love, we can only achieve this through sharing in His sufferings. This may come from when we suffer physical or psychological or emotional pains. When we are mocked, criticized, and even hated for living out our faith. When we suffer the pain of those we love falling away from the faith. When we are betrayed by our friends. When the one we love cheats on us. When we suffer the loss of loved ones. And so much more.

With each experience of shared suffering with Jesus Christ we take one step closer to the Cross on our own path to Calvary. With each experience of shared suffering with Jesus Christ we take one step closer to experiencing intimate union with God. A union and intimacy and closeness that can only be experienced by suffering and dying with Jesus on the Cross in our own lives.

Again, in giving glory to God, we illuminate all that is True, Good, and Beautiful. There is nothing more True. Nothing more Good. Nothing more Beautiful than the Cross of Christ. When we look at the Cross we see the glory of God, and to the extent that we share in His sufferings we also share in His glory. We share in His glory, and we ourselves become bearers of what is True, Good, and Beautiful. What we as Catholics believe about the redemptive aspect of suffering is one of the most difficult teachings that we believe, but it is also one of the most beautiful. Today, Christ gives us hope that our sufferings are not meaningless, but are the very means in which we give glory to God, and draw so close to our Lord that we can experience the kiss from his mouth, the Holy Spirit, the bond of love, that unites us with God the Father and Jesus Christ His Son, as we share in the love and glory of God for all eternity.

**Image - Titian, “Christ Carrying the Cross”, c. 1565 (photo: Public Domain)