SUFFERING FOR HAPPINESS!

Friday, June 03, 2011

Sts. Charles Lwanga and Companions, Martyrs (Memorial)

By Lorenz S. Centino, Jr.

John 16: 20 - 23

20        Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.

21        When a woman is in travail she has sorrow, because her hour has come; but when she is delivered of the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a child is born into the world.

22        So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.

23        In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father, he will give it to you in my name.

PERSONAL REFLECTIONS:

A BLESSED FRIDAY!!!

SUFFERING is a fact of life. To many of us, it would even seem that it is more real than happiness. Our birth is even highlighted with one of the most personal expressions of suffering- crying. A baby normally cries as he/she gasp for his/her first breathe outside the comfort of his/her mother’s womb. No one can really be exempted from suffering’s clasp, though in different degree and circumstance to each one of us. Yet most of us have tried to avoid and be free from suffering's claws for it goes against our basic orientation towards happiness. Suffering is taken always as venom that spoils happiness. Judy Collins said, “It is true that I have had heartache and tragedy in my life. These are things none of us avoids. Suffering is the price of being alive.” This may sound pessimistic, but it is just a matter of recognizing a basic reality in life.

In the Gospel today Jesus recognizes this reality of suffering. He even declared it to happen inevitably to his followers as he says “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful...” To highlight this weeping and lamentation, Jesus has used the pain of a woman in giving birth. However, Jesus does not intend to make a bleak and dreary picture of life. He has spoken about pain, suffering as part of the journey to happiness. He spoke about suffering just to give us the perspective not to be discouraged nor be depressed about the DIFFICULTIES of life, but to see it as a PASSAGE to HAPPINESS. The woman who gives birth has to undergo the pangs of fear and anguish for her life and taste the pain of labor and delivery for the JOY of the coming of a new life. We should not look at happiness then as a station we arrive at, but a CHOICE we have to make always in our journey in life. 

Jesus is not like the prophets of doom that sow fear of suffering in peoples’ hearts just for them to return back to God. Jesus was just revealing the stark reality that the HAPPINESS or JOY that the Kingdom of God promises entails carrying one’s Cross daily. In the previous Gospel readings Jesus has already indicated to his disciples that he will leave them because he will be going back to the one who sent him. And such returning back is the way to his cross. But it is a cross that he has to go through so for him to gain for us the fullness of our happiness. Jesus’ way to the cross can analogously be looked as his pain in laboring and giving birth to a new life- our everlasting life! As Christians, we are not considering suffering an illusion but a reality that we have to embrace. But it is not meant to be a passive embrace or a desperate surrender to it, but an embrace that has JOY in one’s heart that will transform suffering into a PATH to LIBERATION from suffering itself towards the fullness of life with God in his Kingdom.