Thought for the Day – 25 May – Meditations with Fr Richard Frederick Clarke SJ (1839-1900) SJ
PATIENCE
Meditations for a Month
The Mystery of Suffering
- Those who look upon the world without taking into account the nature of sin, the meaning of a state of probation and the rewards and punishments of the life to come, are puzzled by the sufferings which seem everywhere to abound. Why has a merciful God created us to suffer? Why is it that the innocent have to suffer one day, while the guilty seem to prosper? Why is it that the most virtuous often have the hardest lot and the bitterest trials? Suffering is indeed a mystery.
- Friendship with God generally entails suffering. How many a man hitherto prosperous falls into every kind of misfortune when he turns to God! It seems as if a high degree of virtue brought misery, not happiness. Dives, surrounded with every luxury and Lazarus, covered with ulcers lying half-starved at his gate; Annas triumphant and Jesus Crucified; Herod feasting and John butchered in his prison cell; the Roman Emperor in all the pride of empire and the friends of God torn by wild beast – what an apparent anomaly! On a small scale there is the same anomaly in my life and in the little world in which I live. I am inclined to find fault with God’s arrangements. Oh how foolishly!
- Does God repay good with evil by sending suffering to those He loves? They themselves do not think so and they are the best judges. They rather like sufferings. How can this be? Suffering, in itself, is the reverse of pleasant. But in its effects how wonderful! In its power to counteract evil how effectual! As a mark of God’s favour how valuable! In its promise for the future, how replete with blessings! It may be said to contain, within itself, all sweetness, not in the present but in the future. This is the view I must take of suffering.
AnaStpaul 