Jesus spoke about the need to take up your cross… he said that blessed are you if you are persecuted… said that you must be willing to die to yourself… does God want you to suffer? If so, is there a bad way to suffer? Can you suffer well?

So many people are suffering in our world today, and even if we don’t want to think about that, we cannot escape from the images and experiences of suffering everywhere we go.

We read something peculiar today in the letter to the Colossians: “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, the Church.” What does that mean? That if suffering is going to be an inevitable part of life, we might as well accept it as Jesus accepted it, not for the mere sake of suffering itself, but because Jesus transformed suffering into a means of resurrection. If and when I suffer, to whatever degree, I need not try to ignore or escape it, I embrace it because it is my pathway towards transformation, but the key is that – transformation.

Many people forget that. Many people think that the Church just want you to suffer, to live in an eternal lent of self-punishment and penance and forget that the purpose of lent is to get to the resurrection. No wonder why the Protestant reformers ended up taking the body of Jesus off the cross. We know that Jesus is risen, he suffered and died for us, so it was best to look at the empty cross. But the fact is: God does not want us to suffer. The reason we rejoice in suffering is because we know that God has entered into human suffering to transform evil into good, not to keep us hanging on the cross ourselves.

There are different ways that suffering comes into our lives. Yes, sometimes we don’t have a choice, we can suffer because of the choices of others, but many times we suffer because of our own choices. We ignored the advice that we were given, refused help, or resisted change. So, we always have to ask ourselves: Am I suffering because of something that I could change? I am messing up my own life? And if that is the case, then we ask God to give us the courage to change.

One of the many examples in scripture is the story of Abraham who, like many Old Testament heroes, messed up their lives because of their bad choices. He received the covenant promise from God that he and Sarah would have many descendants but he had a hard time believing it, they were both advanced in years so the likelihood of Sarah getting pregnant was nearly impossible. So, what does he do? He has a child with the much younger Hagar instead, and that choice resulted in a total disaster. It resulted in jealousy between Sarah and Hagar and their family life was a complete mess. Any family who has faced infidelity know how destructive that choice can be, it is very difficult to overcome it, not impossible, but it does require a lot of work.

But God is true to his promise despite human error, so he makes Abraham and his household swear an oath of fidelity to him and the covenant. He does so by making all of the men of the household get circumcised, which as adults and without anesthetic you can just imagine what that must have been like. As my professor would say: that was an oath they would definitely never forget…

What we heard in our first reading today is what happened afterwards. God, true to his promise, sends three messengers to Abraham and announces, yet again, that Sarah will indeed conceive within a year. Even after all the bad decisions, God is faithful to us in our suffering, and can help us to change, and to turn negative consequences into blessings.

Sometimes people suffer because they have the wrong spirituality of suffering. “God must want me to suffer so that I can be more like Christ, so I will simply take it and offer it up.” To simply accept suffering and not question it’s origin means I am not going to be open to the possibility of change.

The story of Mary and Martha is an example of this. Martha is overwhelmed with suffering, and she snaps at Jesus and Mary because they seem to ignore her. This goes beyond household duties, this is a story about the struggle of many women through history who have suffered because they have had to be subservient to men.

Jesus came to change the order of power, to make us realize that there is a fundamental equality in men and woman, and that is what he is offering Martha and Mary by visiting them, a chance to do what woman where not allowed to do: sit at his feet and listen to the word of God like men did and learn about how God can change their lives. Mary dared to break away from unfair and unjust social norms and accepts the offer, while Martha chooses to stay a victim and complains about it because she thought that is what God wanted her to do, suffer and stay there.

This gospel passage is a significant shift in how the power of God through the Church would come to change the role of women in society who over the centuries would became leaders of institutions and hospitals and schools.

So those are the two wrong ways to suffer: because of our own bad decisions, and because of a bad spirituality on suffering. So, how do you suffer well? How do you suffer like Jesus? How do you rejoice in suffering?

We suffer the way that Jesus suffered when we do not allow the imperfection of the world to lead us to lose hope. The world is full of imperfections. There are natural imperfections like illness and aging, and there are imperfections due to the condition of sin: injustice. If that is the case, we suffer as Jesus did when we don’t let these things rob us of hope, but instead choose to listen to the promise of the Word of God, like Mary did.

That is what we pray for when we say “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us… Lead us not into temptation… Deliver us from evil.”

When others sin against us, I transform suffering by returning the offence with prayer and not allowing the sin of someone else to lead us to become angry or resentful. Jesus never cursed the people who crucified him or mocked him on the cross. That’s the way most of the crucified people acted, cursing the people down there looking up at them, or spitting on them. Instead, Jesus prayed: “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.”

We suffer as Jesus did when we allow our suffering to increase our sense of solidarity with others who suffer. We don’t turn in on ourselves, but rather we become more sympathetic with the struggles of others.

The major way that evil is transformed into good is when suffering stimulates love and care for others, when we allow it to bring us together rather than tear us apart. If that is what I am allowing suffering to do, then yes, I embrace it because that is how God’s promise to Abraham, the unity of the human family, now through the Church, is being fulfilled. As Colossians put it “to bring to completion for you the word of God, to bring to fulfillment the promise of God.”

Your capacity to suffer well brings to fulfillment the promise of God, so be sure you are not suffering in vain (bad spirituality), or for the wrong reason (because of your own bad choices). If so, sit at Jesus’ feet, pray, and allow the power of the gospel lead you to change.

Family, we all suffer at some point in our lives. Jesus has shown us how suffering can be the privileged place where evil is transformed into good. So suffer well.