Lent is a time of suffering. Whether it is the suffering we place upon ourselves as a special act of penance, or if it is that sweetest of all suffering sent to us by God for our benefit, suffering is a guaranteed aspect of the Christian life. With a religion totally based on the image of Christ Crucified, one can only expect a certain amount of suffering while living as a Catholic. What is the importance of this suffering and why is it necessary in Lent?
To understand suffering, we must go back to a time before Christ, to that most legendary Greek poet, Homer. In Homer’s, Odyssey, Odysseus is shipwrecked on an island while trying to reach his wife and children in Ithaca. The island is home to the beautiful goddess, Calypso, who soon falls in love with the mortal Odysseus. Calypso holds Odysseus captive on the island while providing all the pleasures the world could offer him. With all of his pleasurable appetites fulfilled, one would assume Odysseus is happy to be captive and no longer wishes to return to his homeland. However, Odysseus is in agony, even with all of the world’s sensual delights at his fingertips. He longs for his family and his homeland. While all of his worldly appetites are fulfilled, there is but one thing missing in his life. Love. Odysseus understands that pleasure is not inducive of love. While he understands that his family cannot take away all of his sufferings as the goddess Calypso can, he would rather die than never experience their love again.
Here lies the most important lesson of suffering:
Suffering is necessary for love.
And now there remain faith, hope, and charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity (1 Corinthians 13:13).
As Christ hung on the Cross, He became the greatest act of love possible on Earth.
Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13)
God suffers and dies for His creation because He loves us and desires to be with us for eternity. This is what many do not understand about love. People believe that love is a constant feeling of pleasure that derives from another person. This is evident in our society’s modern problem of divorce. Couples assume that their spouse will take away all of their suffering by offering worldly pleasures that only another human being can offer. When their spouse eventually fails to do this, they assume that love has fallen away when in reality it has only just begun. Suffering is cohesive with love. A husband can only truly love his wife if he has suffered for her. Jesus died on the Cross to demonstrate this. By His own words, we know that to love Him we must suffer.
If you love me, keep my commandments (John 14:15).
Then later, Jesus states that to follow his commandments, we will suffer.
If the world hate you, know ye, that it hath hated me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you (John 15:18-19).
This is how we can truly love God. To suffer for God’s sake should be the greatest achievement in our lives for this penitential season. Whether it is the littlest suffering of having to take out the garbage, or the greatest act of suffering by giving up one’s own life, God will be appeased by all of our efforts to honor him this Lent. I leave you with some wisdom from St. Therese of Lisieux and her “Little Way”.
Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, nor even at their difficulty, but at the love with which we do them.
