My son, if you come forward to serve the Lord, remain in justice and in fear, and prepare yourself for temptation.
Set your heart right and be steadfast, incline your ear, and receive words of understanding, and do not be hasty in time of calamity.
Accept whatever is brought upon you, and endure it in sorrow; in changes that humble you be patient.
For gold is tested in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation.
(Sirach 2:1-5)In this you rejoice, though now for a little while you may have to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold which though perishable is tested by fire, may redound to praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
(1 Peter 1:6-7)Never fear, all your ills will be healed.
You say they are big ones, but the divine doctor is even greater.
For an all-powerful doctor there is no such thing as an incurable sickness.
Let yourself be cared for, don’t push away his hand, he knows what to do.
Don’t be happy only when he acts with gentleness, but bear with it too when he prunes.
Accept the unpleasantness of the cure by thinking of the healing it will bring you.
(St. Augustine, On the Psalms, 103:4)
A constant theme in the New Testament is that we need to be made worthy of our heavenly destiny.
Not only do we need to be forgiven of specific sins that we have committed; our hearts need to be cleansed of whatever is not fit for God’s kingdom.
Our call is high and noble, yet there is much in us that is mediocre and downright ignoble.
We are called to live among the bright and fearsome angels.
How will we endure their presence?
St. Paul urges the Ephesians: “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all lowliness and meekness, with patience, forbearing one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Ephesians 4:1-3).
Simply put, we need to be made great.
The Lord uses many means to make us worthy of his kingdom.
One of them is suffering.
He uproots our false hopes, our low pleasures, and our superficial distractions by allowing us to lose them.
We get concerned about our looks, and he allows us to grow old and unattractive.
We are overly attached to the good opinion of those around us, and he allows our reputation to be tarnished.
We have put too much hope in another person, and that person is taken from us.
We are proud of our successes, and he allows our pet project to fail.
If we respond wrongly to this kind of suffering we can become embittered, cranky and annoyed at best, and angry against God at worst.
“How could he have done this to me? Why did he let this happen? Why isn’t he taking better care of me? I don’t deserve this!”
Instead, we will want to remember our Father’s care for us.
The uncomfortable truth is that, left to ourselves, in comfort and ease, we would seldom rise to the dignity of our calling.
The Lord knows exactly what kind of purification we need to be ready for our true life.
We must leave things to his care and endure suffering with patience and faith.
As we do so, the genuineness of our faith will be tested, and in the analogy of St. Peter and Juda Ben Sirach, we will be purified and refined the way gold is refined by fire.
Suffering, challenge, and difficulty, in the hands of our skillful Lord, purify us.
So here is a further call, brothers.
In addition to accepting suffering in reparation for our past sins, let’s also embrace it as a purifying fire.
For God is always going for the purest gold.
