To Suffer is the Divine Purgation

Living beings undergo constant suffering and anguish,
benighted, without teacher or guide,
not realizing there is a way to end suffering,
not knowing how to seek emancipation.
— The Lotus Sutra

I never sought emancipation from suffering. I endured under the belief there was wisdom found within it. But to suffer alone, to suffer without sacrifice, brings nothing. Only suffering received and offered with Christ can become salvific.

“Christ taught man to do good by His suffering, and to go to those who suffer,” Saint John Paul II writes. Suffering is a purgation of evil that causes me to shudder. Yet, I must let it pass through me. For it will pass.

The memories of suffering within Sacrament of Marriage never fade. God never removes them. He allows them to remain, so that I remember where I came from. Erik Varden writes, “To be at ease is to be unsafe, and it is never too late to turn into a pillar of salt.”

In the seasons when the ability to see light within the darkness feels like a distant dream, I have learned to carry my cross. In those hours, when the streets are empty and I sit with my wife in adoration with Him, I no longer ask why but what? What is He showing me? What is He purging from my life. What is He purging from my soul?

Embrace suffering. The mere virtue I have for perseverance was forged in a disciplined life, forged before I knew how to name it as Catholic. Now in prayer, fasting, and penance when suffering inevitably comes, I accept it. Difficult as it is, I understand the constant purgation my life must undertake.

God gives me what I cannot handle on my own, but gives me nothing He cannot bear with me. If I desire a more perfect union with Him, I should accept with grace those more difficult trials to come. As they are opportunities to discipline my mind and body, to persevere, to be purged and made more like Him.

Still, in those moments of suffering, I want to understand God, to understand His will, but I cannot grasp His reasoning. Perhaps, at times, I do not want to accpet it. But when His light presses upon my soul, I dare not resist. To go against Him would throw me back into the blackest depths of the seas.

And yet, in my humanity, I fight these interior impressions that I am to love as no one has loved me. I do not understand. They go against everything I have been taught by the world, and even by those who were meant to love me. Still, in the recesses of the mind and soul, I listen. They are words heard like no other.

It is not within the quietness of life around me, but the quietness of my soul that has afforded me the ability to listen. Restlessness within drowns out the gentle voice. When He grants that quiet, His voice begins to heal the wounds, even though the scars remain. He emancipates me from the chains of despair into the joys of life with Him.