Love Suffers Willingly

In my suffering, can I be like Jesus and accept pain and trial as the Father's loving will for my eternal good?

God wants us to be like His most precious Son and so He allows trials and sufferings that have the potential to make us more Christ-like. The key to remember is that these events have the potential to sanctify us but whether they do depends on us, on our free will. We must choose to accept our crosses as Christ accepted His.

How can we be like Jesus in the times when it is most difficult to even retain our faith… times of intense suffering, our winters of exile?

When I contemplate Jesus’ moments of most excruciating suffering, the agony in the garden, the scourging at the pillar, and the Crucifixion, I notice that He was not outwardly joyful or cheerful in His suffering, but He was willing.

He was willing to suffer and die because His Love impelled Him to accept the will of His Father. He trusted that His suffering and death would lead to good, to the greatest good, the salvation of souls. Love was willing to suffer because Love always begets more Love even when it appears to have been defeated and crucified.

To be like Christ and to obtain union with Him we must be willing to accept suffering. Suffering is inevitable in this fallen world. Accepting this truth and trusting that our times of trial and suffering are opportunities to unite ourselves with Jesus leads to peace and consolation in the midst of pain. And this is the path to holiness, allowing suffering to soften, not harden, our hearts so He can mold and make them like His. He only asks that we be willing, willing to say with Him “Father if it is Your will take this cup from me. But Your will not Mine be done.” When we are united to Jesus, He will be with us in our darkness and pain, loving us and teaching us how even death brings life when we say “Yes” to God’s will.

“The greatest honor God can do a soul is not give it much; but to ask much of it. I'm suffering very much, but am I suffering very well?”

St. Therese of Lisieux