Redemptive Suffering: God's and Ours

In today’s first reading, Hebrews 2: 5-12, St. Paul reminds us that “[i]t was not to angels that God subjected the world to come,” but to His only Begotten Son.  “In ‘subjecting’ all things to him, he left nothing not ‘subject’ to him.”  Wow!  You and I, every person in this world, every living thing, humans and beasts alike, are subject to the Lord.  We wonder as we listen to the news each night: men and women seeking to destroy one another, men and women and children being persecuted for their faith, men and women involved in every kind of abominable crime imaginable here on this earth.  “Subject” to him? It does not look like it.

In Jesus’ time, it did not look like the Messiah had come either—the Son of God as an infant, the Son of God fleeing for His life into Egypt, the  Son of God crucified on the cross? A Messiah? One to establish peace on earth?  He was killed. What kind of Messiah is that, we may wonder.  Many in today’s world see Jesus only as a prophet, not as the Son of God made man, the Son of God as Redeemer, Sanctifier, as the One who reconciles all things to Himself and to the Father. Yet that is who Jesus is! I believe! Do you?

Jesus, St. Paul tells us, tasted “death for everyone. For  it was fitting that he, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the leader to their salvation perfect through suffering.”   The demon who had taken possession of the man referred to in today’s Gospel reading, Mark 1: 21-28, recognized  Jesus’ origins, that He is the Son of God and says to Jesus: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us I know who you are—the Holy One of God!”  The answer , of course, to that question is “Yes, Jesus did come to destroy Satan and all of his works through His sufferings on the cross.  Our sufferings, too, united with the sufferings of Jesus,  are redemptive and “bring us to glory.”  May I recognize that truth when suffering comes upon me and not curse it, rant and rave about it, recoil from its invitation to act on God’s behalf  but embrace it in faith and trust in God’s power working within me for my good and the good of the Church.

Walking in God's Ways

In today’s first reading, Jeremiah 7: 23-28, God, through the prophet, challenges us to listen to God’s voice. “Then,” Yahweh says, “I will be your God and you shall be my people.”  To whose voice am I listening? God continues:  “Walk in all the ways that I command you, so that you may prosper.”  In whose way am I walking? Which path am I following?    Of the Israelites,  God says: “…[T]hey obeyed  not, nor did they pay heed.  They walked in the hardness of their evil hearts and turned their backs, not their faces, to me.” God instructs Jeremiah to say to the Israelites:  “This is a nation that does not listen to the voice of the Lord, its God, or take correction. Faithfulness has disappeared; the word itself is banished from their speech.” Does God say to me personally: “You do not listen to my voice; nor do you take correction. Faithfulness has disappeared in your life; the word itself is banished from your speech”?

If it is true that you and I have stopped listening and have turned our backs on Jesus, we have the consolation Jesus gives us in today’s Gospel, Luke 11: 14-32.  Jesus is casting out “a demon that was mute, and when the demon had gone out, the mute man spoke and the crowds were amazed.”    A demon is anything that or anyone who lures us away from God, invites us “to turn our backs,” on God.  Evil is all around us; that means that evil spirits, truly, prowl around the world seeking the ruin of souls (Prayer to St. Michael for protection).  This is occurring every moment of every day and night. However, no less now, than when Jesus walked the earth, does Jesus drive out the demons that silence us when it comes to our faith in God, our faith in Jesus, our faith in the Trinity and its presence in our world, a presence that will overcome Satan in whatever way he deceives us and those around us. Yes, “it is by the finger of God that…[Jesus] drives out demons, [and therefore we know that] the Kingdom of God has come upon us.” We shall be set free, and always are being set free,  to return to the Lord, to turn our backs back to the Lord and again begin to hear His voice and heed his commands. Praise to our God!