A Final Sunday Thought During Our Glorious Easter Season About Conquering, Fighting, Suffering

Despite this glorious Easter Season, we have taken up the last three Sundays with spiritual direction focused on the reality that our struggle to conquer sin and ourselves, always includes suffering. We do this because we Catholics must have at least a modicum of spiritual maturity built up over time to face reality - the reality of suffering. And suffering does not "disappear" even during this glorious Easter Season.

Yes, we continue to celebrate the Resurrection. We continue to meditate on the hope for eternal life Jesus' rising from the dead has brought to us. Our hope, always in need of a spark, has been enkindled with the Fire of His Love - a fiery Love we shall soon celebrate on Pentecost Sunday. All of this brings us the grace we need to build our spiritual muscles for the continuing struggle for sanctity. And, again, that struggle always and everywhere comes with suffering. 

But wait. Our final installment by Fr. Michel brings a surprising message. While self-mortification remains a major component in our struggle to advance in our spiritual life, there's phenomenon that some of us may have experienced - or if not yet, then we may in the future. A personal example might help illuminate. Let's start with the simple mortification of waiting a couple of minutes after you say grace before meals before digging in. 

This one's not that hard to begin with, but it may get harder when we happen to be really hungry. In my case, the delay when hungry proved difficult for, well, quite a while (years, not months). But at some point the difficulty wasn't that difficult anymore. It sort of felt like I was cheating in some way.

What to do? Up the ante? You could. And if prudent, maybe that's one response. But here's the interesting twist: The easing up is apparently a natural phenomenon according to Father Michel. And there's no reason to give it a second thought. Each repetition makes the effort easier. 

This can provide encouragement to those souls who really aren't chomping at the bit to mortify themselves. So maybe this helps motivate us to just go ahead and mortify away!

But do read the whole installment. It caps a 4-week series that provides a solid foundation for us to both understand the fundamental role of suffering in our salvation, along with the reasons why we should not in any way shy away from it.

 

We Cannot Conquer Without Fighting,
And There is No Fighting Without Suffering (Part 4 of 4)
Fr. Jacques Michel, S.J. (1712-?)

    “Let us rest assured, too, that we are very much mistaken, if we think that the difficulty which we experience in self-mortification, and in performing our duties for the love of God, will continue as vivid and painful as we find it in the beginning. Experience teaches us that, on merely natural principles, when we frequently perform any action, or through the assistance of divine grace accustom ourselves to act from good motives, we contract a habit of doing so which becomes easier with every repetition. Whatever difficulty at first existed gradually diminishes and finally disappears. Let us only, for a while, do violence to ourselves, and perform our actions with fidelity and exactness as to time and place, and we shall soon find that we do them, as it were, instinctively, and the religious motive seems to present itself of its own accord. So true is this that some scrupulous souls are apt to become troubled and wrongly imagine that they have no merit, because they no longer feel the sacrifice or the suffering in the duty which had cost them so much at first. They overlook the fact that it is the supernatural motive, under the instigation of grace, which gives merit to the action, and not its difficulty. Religion, moreover, teaches us that God rewards the efforts we make to overcome ourselves, by imparting graces which not only lessen difficulties, but even cause us to derive pleasure from what was at first so painful. And even though the trial continues for a longer time, He will never suffer it to surpass our strength, aided by the grace which He has provided, and which we can always obtain through prayer. Rely on this promise, for it can never fail. Let us never dwell upon the uncertainty of our perseverance, without also remembering God’s assurance that He will help us and reward us; this will strengthen us and reanimate our confidence.”

I hope you enjoyed and derived serious benefit from this 4-week Easter Season series. 

 

Happy Easter!