Anguish Turned into Joy, a Joy No One Can Take from Us

“He brings people under us; nations under our feet. He chooses for us our inheritance, the glory of Jacob, whom he loves” (Ps. 47).   As we pray this psalm, we might say to ourselves: “Really?  Look at what is happening in the world: people losing loved ones,  sold into slavery, becoming victims of human traffickers and slave laborers, traumatized by earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes and other natural  and man-made disasters.”

Jesus says to us in today’s Gospel, John 16: 20-23,  “…you will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices; you will grieve, but your grief will become joy. When a woman is in labor, she is in anguish because her hour has arrived; but when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the pain because of her joy that a child has been born into the world. So you also are now in anguish. But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away.”

Jesus did not promise us roses without thorns. He Himself did not experience life that way. He, too, wept and mourned losses in his life: the death of his foster father Joseph, the grief of leaving home and embracing his role in life, the loss of John the Baptist and the death of His friend Lazarus, the Pharisees constantly spying on Him and seeking ways to trap Him, arrest Him and have Him put to death, His family thinking He was insane and, ultimately being betrayed by a close follower, arrested, flogged, crowned with thorns, mocked, spit upon, stripped of his clothing and hung on a cross naked with nails through His hands and feet, watched to die and made fun of in the process. All for our salvation and that our inheritance would be secured for us.

Could it be that we, too, make this same journey to our death and, in the process, participate in our own salvation? Could it be that our life here on earth is a dwelling place “in the womb of God,” our coming to birth involving the same pain as when a mother gives birth to a child. Our joy will be complete when we are, in fact, born into eternal life?

Something certainly worth thinking about!