The Christian must not only accept suffering: he must make it holy. Nothing so easily becomes unholy as suffering.

Merely accepted, suffering does nothing for our souls except, perhaps, to harden them. Endurance alone is no consecration. True asceticism is not a mere cult of fortitude. We can deny ourselves rigorously for the wrong reason and end up by pleasing ourselves mightily with our self-denial.

Suffering is consecrated to God by faith – not by faith in suffering, but by faith in God. To accept suffering stoically, to receive the burden of fatal, unavoidable and incomprehensible necessity and bear it strongly, is no consecration. ... suffering has no power and no value of its own.

To believe in suffering is pride. But to suffer, believing in God, is humility. For pride may tell us that we are strong enough to suffer, that suffering is good for us because we are good. Humility tells us that suffering is an evil which we must always expect to find in our lives because of the evil that is in ourselves. But faith also knows that the mercy of God is given to those who seek Him in suffering, and that by His grace we can overcome evil with good. Suffering, then, becomes good by accident, by the good that it enables us to receive more abundantly from the mercy of God. It does not make us good by itself, but it enables us to make ourselves better than we are. Thus, what we consecrate to God in suffering is not our suffering but our selves.

* * *

Only the sufferings of Christ are valuable in the sight of God, who hates evil, and to him they are valuable chiefly as a sign. The death of Jesus on the cross has an infinite meaning and value not because it is a death, but because it is the death of the Son of God. The cross of Christ says nothing of the power of suffering or of death. It speaks only of the power of him who overcame both suffering and death by rising from the grave.

The wounds that evil stamped upon the flesh of Christ are to be worshiped as holy not because they are wounds, but because they are His wounds. Nor would we worship them if he had merely died of them, without rising again. For Jesus is not merely someone who once loved us enough to die for us. His love for us is the infinite love of God, which is stronger than all evil and cannot be touched by death.

Suffering, therefore, can only be consecrated to God by one who believes that Jesus is not dead. And it is of the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they have meaning, but because the resurrection of Jesus has robbed them of their meaning.

Thomas Merton, No Man Is An Island [pp. 78-79]

"the servitude of doing things for your own satisfaction"

In On Thomas Merton, Mary Gordon takes note of a period in Merton's life where he served as a spiritual counselor of sorts to the English writer Evelyn Waugh (and Merton in turn would petition Waugh for tips on how to be a better writer). From their exchanges comes this recommendation which struck me as particularly appropriate for Lent [Merton to Waugh, September 22, 1948]:

The virtue of hope is the one talented people most need. They tend to trust in themselves -- and when their own resources fail then they will prefer despair to the reliance on anyone else, even on God. It gives them a kind of feeling of distinction.

Really I think it might do you a lot of good and give you a certain happiness to say the Rosary every day. If you don't like it, so much the better, because then you would deliver yourself from the servitude of doing things for your own satisfaction: and that slavery to our own desires is a terrific burden. I mean if you could do it as a more or less blind act of love and homage to Our Lady, not bothering to try and find out where the attraction of the thing could possibly be hidden and why other people see to like it. The real motive for this devotion at the moment is that the Church is very explicit: a tremendous amount depends on the Rosary and everything depends on our Lady.

Not to dismiss entirely the subjective element within one's religious life (the Church recommends a wide variety of spiritual devotions and practices which the layman can avail himself of), but I couldn't help but observe Merton's remark on the "servitude of doing things for your own satisfaction" as a wry comment alluding to a consumerist mindset that we can sometimes fall into, "spirituality-shopping" as it were, in the form of seeking out those practices that are most appealing, emotionally comfortable or psychologically "satisfying". Sometimes this takes the form of parish-hopping (don't like the hymns? the homily? the mass?); at other times it might be a particular way of meditating, praying, a regimen of fasting, et al. But I think Merton is on to something in his criticism of referring to our own self-satisfaction as the ultimate criterion for value in spiritual life, especially where we might be inclined to forsake a practice because we find too "hard", too "boring", too "uncomfortable" or that we simply (in the contemporary language of our age) "didn't get anything out of it."

Likewise regarding Merton's reference to the "slavery of our own desires", I find I am too entirely susceptible to misinterpret my wants as "needs", not just on a physical level (indulgence of the senses and appetite, especially in the way of food and drink) but mentally and psychologically as well, perpetually grasping after this or that fleeting desire which even when satisfied is found to be wanting.

Gordon observes in closing:

Merton here is urging upon Waugh, the amateur contemplative, the same self-forgetting discipline that Waugh urges upon Merton, the fledgling writer: embrace what is difficult, what is least comfortable and natural, and get on with the job at hand.

May these forty days of Lent -- with its small and large sacrifices -- provide opportunities for us to take notice of the relentless, distracting and demanding tug of of our own desires, but in those moments to seek more fervently God's grace to overcome, to "get on with the job at hand."

Lenten wisdom from Fulton J. Sheen

You have freedom only to give your heart away. To whom do you give yours? You give it either to the moods of the hour, to your egotism, to creatures, or to God.

* * *

No soul ever fell away from God without giving up prayer. Prayer is that which establishes contact with the divine power and opens the invisible resources of heaven. However dark the way, when we pray, temptation can never master us. The first step downward in the average soul is the giving up of the practice of prayer, the breaking of the circuit with divinity, and the proclamation of one's own self-sufficiency.

Ven. Fulton J. Sheen

Lenten Reading: Hans Urs von Balthasar

Now it is quite clear what it means to break into the strong man's house and plunder his goods. Somehow man has been deprived of his guilt. Someone stronger has robbed him of it. To the annoyance of Kant and all autonomists, man sees that the wall he built around himself against God has fallen down. The "dividing wall of hostility" (Eph 2:14) has been demolished. Tel a bound man to raise his hand and he cannot. Cut his bonds and tell him again to raise his hand, and he can if he wishes -- but he may not wish to. Compared with guilt, grace has become super-abundant (Rom 5:15-21), but freedom can only be embraced freely. The indicative -- that we have died and been raised with Christ -- is a fact, but the imperative it implies must be heard and acted on by man.

~ Hans Urs von Balthasar (Does Jesus Know Us? Do We Know Him?, pp. 40).

Balthasar on solidarity and separation; some Lenten reading.

... we do well to keep our distance from the watered-down theories that, on the Cross, Jesus simply drew the final conclusion of his constant solidarity with sinners; just as he had shared meals with tax collectors and prostitutes, so now he let himself be crucified with two thieves. It is true, but by no means the whole truth.

Theories like this try to show that Jesus' attitude to sinners was nothing other than a demonstration of the reconciled attitude God had already shown towards the world's guilt. But what sense would this make of the many stern words of judgement in the mouth of Jesus? And what of the whole terrible drama, the tragedy of the Old Covenant between Yahweh and Israel? What of the departure of God's glory from the Temple, and the angel, with fire from God's throne, setting it in flames? Was all his a pure misunderstanding, corrected by Christ's Father-God? Would not this bring us back to Marcion's anti-Semitic gnosticism, in which the God of the Old Testament was an inferior demon? Surely the Bible is a unity? -- especially in view of the continuity from the great prophets, Job and the "Servant" to the Cross of Christ.

Certainly the Cross is concerned with Jesus' "solidarity" with sinners. But this word, so much in vogue today, is much too weak to express the whole depth of the identification taken on by Jesus. The truth of sin (particularly, when it is see as he lie) must be realized somewhere in the iron ruthlessness implied by the sinner's "No" to God and God's "No" to this refusal. And this could only be realised by someone who is so truthful in himself that he is able to acknowledge the full negativity of this "No": someone who is able to experience it, to bear it, to suffer its deadly opposition and melt its rigidity through pain.

We must carefully avoid drawing false conclusions. We cannot say that Jesus, instead of the sinner, is "punished" by God. Nor can we say that he feels "damned" by God and placed in "hell." For we associate the state of "hell" with a hatred of God. It would be meaningless to ascribe to the Crucified the slightest resentment toward God. But it is quite possible to speak of the Son of God suffering what the sinner deserved, i.e., separation from God, perhape even complete and final separation.

It can even be said that no one can suffer being forsaken by God more profoundly than the Son, whose whole life was unit with the Father, whose meat and drink it was to do His will. On the Cross he still does His will without realizing it anymore. With every fiber of his being he clings to God whose presence he no longer feels, because now, in the name of sinners, he is to experience what it means to have lost contact with God.

~ Hans Urs von Balthasar (Does Jesus Know Us? Do We Know Him?, pp. 34-36).

Excerpt from some Lenten reading.

Do we know Him?

It is a fact: only the person who is convinced that Jesus knows him personally gains access to knowledge of him. And only the person who is confident of knowing him as he is, can know that he is also known by him.

~ Hans Urs von Bathalsar (Does Jesus Know Us? Do We Know Him?)

The Spiritual Exercises

"The Spiritual Exercises" is

a collaborative effort between David Paternostro, S.J., John Brown, S.J., Deacon Kevin Dyer, S.J., and Fr. Chris Collins, S.J. In it, we will offer daily reflections over the course of Lent based on the prayers proposed by St. Ignatius Loyola, S.J., in his Spiritual Exercises. By Easter, one who has followed these reflections regularly will have a basic introduction to the whole of the Spiritual Exercises.

Practical Guidance from Cardinal Newman

From my personal Lenten reading:

When, then, a man complains of his hardness of heart or weakness of purpose, let him see to it whether this complaint is more than a mere pretence to quiet his conscience, which is frightened at his putting off repentance; or, again, more than a mere idle word, said half in jest and half in compunction. But, should he be earnest in his complaint, then let him consider he has no need to complain. Every thing is plain and easy to the earnest; it is the double-minded who find difficulties. If you hate your own corruption in sincerity and truth, if you are really pierced to the heart that you do not do what you know you should do, if you would love God if you could, then the Gospel speaks to you words of peace and hope. . . .

. . . Christ says, "Watch and pray;" herein lies our cure. To watch and to pray are surely in our power, and by these means we are certain of getting strength. You feel your weakness; you fear to be overcome by temptation: then keep out of the way of it. This is watching. Avoid society which is likely to mislead you; flee from the very shadow of evil; you cannot be too careful; better be a little too strict than a little too easy,˜it is the safer side. Abstain from reading books which are dangerous to you. Turn from bad thoughts when they arise, set about some business, begin conversing with some friend, or say to yourself the Lord's Prayer reverently. When you are urged by temptation, whether it be by the threats of the world, false shame, self-interest, provoking conduct on the part of another, or the world's sinful pleasures, urged to be cowardly, or covetous, or unforgiving, or sensual, shut your eyes and think of Christ's precious blood-shedding. Do not dare to say you cannot help sinning; a little attention to these points will go far (through God's grace) to keep you in the right way. And again, pray as well as watch. You must know that you can do nothing of yourself; your past experience has taught you this; therefore look to God for the will and the power; ask Him earnestly in His Son's name; seek His holy ordinances.

Knowledge of God's Will Without Obedience
Parochial & Plain Sermons