We are living a particular Lenten period. We speak of fasting and penance. Maybe this year, most of our fasting has been induced. We have been obliged to forgo many pleasures we have taken for granted: the company of our friends, a trip to a coffee shop, educational experiences, and so forth. We are fasting from even the fulcrum of our Christian faith - the physical gathering of believers to hear the Word of God and the reception of the Eucharist.
What we are experiencing is something bizarrely unique. We cannot escape from what lies around us, even if we decide not to listen to the news. Our sanity depends on a combination of factors, not least a healthy relationship between taking care of ourselves and being attuned to what goes around us in moderate amounts.
And again, the question arises. Why so much suffering? This question has puzzled the most erudite of theologians and failed to yield a satisfactory answers. But maybe we are concerned with answers without pausing to reflect on the process. In Genesis, God was very pleased with his creation. However, we also need to ponder on the depth of God's love. Human suffering arises partly out of free will. God's love could only create a free human being. Metropolitan Kallistos Ware speaks of the great love of God which "enables" him to take a great risk in creating humanity with all that entails, but goes ahead all the same.
A detail in Genesis reminds us that God brought his creatures before Adam, so that Adam could name them (Gn 2, 20). Humanity, thus, becomes a steward of God's creation, but the creation is always God's. The problem which resulted in original sin was pride. And pride obfuscated the person's vision of himself in front of God. He wanted to take God's place, but of course that was only a distortion which heralded death. And that death continues even to our own days, as we manipulate, rape, and exploit the environment in every imaginable way in the belief that we have control over the environment or that creation belongs to us. Sometimes we look at the gifts of other people as a threat to our own pride and vainglory.
When we are compelled to act out of a distorted sense of being, we can only make a muddle of things. Most of the disasters which we are witnessing are, lamentably, the result of human greed and lust. And the terrible decisions taken by some people affect countless innocents, resulting in endless suffering. The reason is that the consequences of sin are collective. Personal sin has a repercussion on the whole community. It does not simply affect the individual. The consequences of sin are communitarian, and we are witnessing them right now. We might not understand it, let alone accept it!
"But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." (Rom 5, 20)Â The beauty of our Christian faith lies in the fact that God himself has come to our aid, by becoming human and becoming exposed to the misery of the human condition. Put simply, God understands our situation because He became human in order to live a whole human experience. While Christ was perfect, he was exposed to suffering. Yet, He did not shirk away from it. He bore it and redeemed it on the cross.
We continue to suffer in our lives and, understandably, we wonder why. Yet, we might fail to take into account the learning experience we might undergo during these moments. The presence of God lies even into the deepest suffering. God's luminous rays of love penetrate even the deepest abyss of misery and evil. We must remember that the source of all evil, or Satan, is a creation of God and can never be equal to or stronger than God.
It is the moment when during the ordeal, an immense feeling of peace washes over us. This does not entail letting go of one's emotions and adopting a stoical attitude devoid of any feelings. It means suffering in the awareness of God's presence. It means re-orienting and attuning our life to the presence of God. It is what enabled Mary, Jesus' mother to stand beneath the cross of her Son in Jn 19, 25.
Accepting one's circumstance entails a dynamic response to one's situation. What does this mean? We have the possibility to channel our suffering and direct it towards our own spiritual growth. Of course, that cannot be done by our merits alone. It is the opening to the grace of God to work in the midst of our messiness, in order to transmute it into meaning. Most importantly, it takes time. At the end, it is our own decision but our life-experience is a channel of our own transfiguration; it is our present which orients us towards a glorious future of an eternal beatific vision.