“To Know, Love, Serve God through Suffering” – 5th Sunday OT (B) – 2.4.24

St. Mark the Evangelist Parish (Cranberry/Butler, PA)

Mass Readings - https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/020424.cfm

By: Fr. David Schmidt

The Church tells us that the purpose of this life is to know God, to love God, and to serve God, so that we may be partakers of divine nature and eternal life.

One of the most profound ways we come to know, love, and serve God is through our suffering.

In the 1st reading, we hear the pain in Job’s voice as he was a man who suffered greatly. He says, “Is not man's life on earth a drudgery? Are not his days those of hirelings? He is a slave who longs for the shade, a hireling who waits for his wages...My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle; they come to an end without hope. Remember that my life is like the wind; I shall not see happiness again.”

Maybe this is your experience of life as well. Feeling hopeless. Feeling like you will never see happiness again. This sense that all life is is that we wake up and suffer every day and that’s it.

However, we know that suffering is not the end. Yes, suffering is a key part in our journey to heaven, but we don’t suffer just to suffer. Suffering is not the end. Suffering is the pathway to eternal life. It is the pathway to eternal joy.

True joy only comes through the way of the Cross. The way of suffering. This is the path that Christ has laid out for us, and this is the only way to experience the unending joy that each one of us are made for, and it’s an important way for how we come to know, love, and serve God.

Know God

There are many ways that we come to know God – Scripture, Tradition, prayer- but how is it that we come to know God through suffering?

St. John of the Cross talks about how we must dig deeply into Christ. He says that “[Christ] is like a rich mine with many pockets containing treasures...” He talks about how there is no limit to how deep we can dig as there are always new riches to discover.

He quotes St. Paul saying, “In him are hidden all the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God.”

St. John of the Cross says that “The soul cannot enter into these treasures, nor attain them, unless it first crosses into and enters the thicket of suffering...” He says, “The gate that gives entry into these riches of his wisdom is the cross...”

So it is through suffering and sharing in the Cross of Christ that we come to have a deeper knowledge of God. This is because one of the greatest mysteries of this life is that God Himself became man and suffered and died on the Cross to save us from our sins.

As we suffer in this life and share in Christ’s suffering, we gain a deeper knowledge of His love for us. And in our suffering, we see a glimpse of what Christ was willing to endure for us.

It is through entering the thicket of suffering that enables our hearts and minds to receive the great riches of wisdom and knowledge of the mysteries of God and of this life.

Love God

As we enter deeper into this thicket of suffering. It also enables us to grow in greater love of God. Suffering enables us to love God because when people have a common experience of suffering it deepens their love for one another.

Christ wanted to draw close to us by sharing in our suffering and death. And we draw close to Him by sharing in His suffering and death. When we share in this suffering with Him, we love Christ in a deeper way because by sharing in Christ’s sufferings with Him, we give Him comfort and consolation.

As we enter the thickets of suffering, we experience the great riches of His love. We experience a deeper intimacy with Him. The deeper we go into these pockets of divine love that are contained within the depths of Christ, the greater love that we experience in our hearts and in our relationship with Him.

Serve God

So we looked briefly at how suffering leads us to a greater knowledge and love of God, now we will look at how we can serve God through our suffering.

In the Gospel, we see our call to serve and help bring Christ’s healing to others. When Peter’s mother-in-law is cured from her fever it says, “Then the fever left her and she waited on them.” Then, it gives the account of Jesus going and working many other healings and driving out demons.

This Gospel is good for us because it shows us that, yes, suffering is an important element of our faith journey, but Christ doesn’t want to keep us in our suffering. He desires to bring us healing. There are both spiritual and physical healings that He seeks to bring us.

We are never to seek out suffering, but we are to surrender to the suffering that Christ allows us to experience, so that we can come to know, love, and serve God the way He is calling us too.

We can continue to pray for healing for ourselves even while we surrender to the suffering that Christ is allowing us to experience.

We can serve God in our suffering and help bring His healing to others by offering up our suffering as a prayer. We unite our suffering to the suffering of Christ on the Cross, and we tap into the powerful love and healing that comes from the Cross.

We live in a world filled with sin and suffering, and we are in need of much healing. We can help bring healing and conversions to people by offering up our suffering for them.

We can pray that people may experience physical healing and that they may receive the graces they need to endure their current trial.

We can offer our suffering for the healing and restoration of people’s body and soul, and we can offer up our suffering for the salvation of souls. I can only imagine how many souls have been saved due to someone offering their suffering for another person’s conversion and that person receiving the graces they need to turn back to Christ and now are with Him in heaven forever.

Again, we don’t suffer just to suffer. Suffering is meant to lead us to greater knowledge and love of God. It is meant to lead us to the great riches of His love that are found deep in the depths of Christ. St. John of the Cross says that when we enter the thickets of suffering, when we enter through this narrow gate, it leads to great consolation. We all seek the joys that come from it, but only few are willing to endure the suffering that it takes to experience those joys.

We need to ask ourselves- “Am I willing to suffer for my family? Am I willing to suffer for those souls who have fallen away? Am I willing to suffer to help bring physical and spiritual healing to others? Am I willing to suffer to share in the wisdom, knowledge, and love of God?”

We need to pray for the courage to enter the narrow gate of suffering so that we can come to know, love, and serve God better. So that we can receive the riches, treasures, consolations, and joys that come only through entering the thickets of suffering into the depths of Christ. And we need to pray for the courage to share in the suffering of Christ so that we can offer up our suffering for our family, for our friends, and for the salvation of souls.