We can expect that before our final death, we have to suffer a thousand and one other deaths as we live from day to day. It is just like the tree which has had to struggle against every adverse natural element — mad winds, stormy weather, solar heat, hard soil. One can sense how hard was its struggle to strike deeper roots into the ground, its branches broken, its leaves torn and its dried or sickly or wilted blossoms reveal to us the greater or lesser difficulties encountered by the tree itself in its growth.
Similarly, we find some difficulty in justifying in our own minds suffering in the world. Seen from the viewpoint of our human experience, the world appears as an immense groping in the dark, an immense onslaught wherein there can be no advance save at the cost of many setbacks and many wounds and countless lives. Those who suffer whatever from their suffering may take, are a living statement of this painful condition.
Did we ever stop to think that those who suffer are paying for the advance and the victory for all? The world in fact is a battlefield where victory is in the making. What kind of victory? Victory of good over evil; victory of salvation over damnation; victory of heaven over hell. In fact, we are all thrown at birth into the thick of this battle. We can than see at least vaguely how for the success of this struggle as Christians and in which we are all fighters, there must inevitably be suffering from the smallest self-denial to the most painful martyrdom for the love of Christ. Self-denial is always a dying. We die to self everytime we forgo a forbidden pleasure, much less a forbidden love. We die to self when we forgo vengeance towards someone who did us some real wrong. We die to self for every legitimate satisfaction we sacrifice. We die to self saving lives of the sick, the hungry, the oppressed, the victims of violence at the cost even of our own lives.
Did not our Lord say,"… greater love than this no man has than that he lays down his life for his neighbor" (Jn 15:13)? And that neighbor could be an Iraqi or a Muslim, or an Arab. Well, at least the Americans and the British are fighting them as if they are enemies. In this war, for example, we can ask the Lord: What is there in suffering, in our daily dying that commits us so deeply to You? Why should our wings flutter more joyfully than before when you stretch out your nets to imprison all that is wrong in us? What is the meaning of freedom to us if we do not surrender to You who are greater than our very lives?
Blessed be, then, all disappointments which snatch the cup of selfish pleasure from our lips; blessed be all the dying to that ‘self’ and blessed be that dying which delivers us to the powers of heaven. For Christ by His Cross assures us: "…when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to Myself" (Jn 12:32).
Fourth Sunday of Lent, John 12:20-33