“But Felicity, you haven’t answered the question yet!” some of my Dear Readers might be thinking.
For those of y’all who are just coming in…the question we’ve been exploring for the past two weeks is “why do bad things happen to good people?”
Let’s go back to the children we’ve been walking with for the past couple of weeks. The first jumps on the bed when their parents said no, and they experienced pain. This is the more expected sort of suffering: a direct result of our own wrong actions. The second child had their training wheels removed and they crashed over and over. This is the less expected suffering: the kind that takes us back and makes us wonder why we even trusted our parents.
What did the children do in response to their suffering?
In time, they called out to their parents.
Some of us have experienced healing immediately when turning to Our Heavenly Parents. We are forgiven for our wrongdoing, and we are cradled in their arms. We are given some insight that helps us figure out the situation we’ve been placed in.
But that’s pretty rare.
As a result, we are looking up at Our Heavenly Parents, begging the question, “Why?”
“Whoever wishes to come after Me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”
~Matthew 16:24-25
Many of my Dear Readers have likely heard this verse in response to the age-old question about suffering. Perhaps the first time you heard this verse you felt comforted by such a bold statement, but with each time you encountered the call to The Cross, you felt more and more disheartened.
Jesus endured The Cross to save us from our sins…to save us from evil…
Why, then, should I ever suffer again?
I’ve been both of these children numerous times, but I’ll expand on my previous testimony.
There was a time when I “fell off the bed.” Much like the child, I rationalized everything I did. I would say that my actions might not be perfect, but if they were helpful for at least one person that the trouble I caused would be erased. I figured that if I looked important and holy and put together that everything would be ok.
Instead I was left alone, and I hurt peoples’ feelings.
Scared and hurt, I called out to God in Confession and prayed numerous prayers to the Blessed Mother so that the pain I caused would be taken away.
In time, I started to become more loving, and life improved, but nothing was perfect. Nothing is perfect in this life.
But I grew up.
Now older in my heart, my Heavenly Parents gave me a “bike with training wheels” if you will. My prayer life became more fruitful, and I started to gain confidence in aspects of my life that I never thought I would be able to change.
People that once hated me became my friends. People listened to me when I spoke, and they understood.
I was happier than I could imagine.
Then my “training wheels” were gone, and there was no way I could get them back.
Looking back at my journals still brings tears to my eyes. Through all of the descriptions of daily life, novenas, prayers, consecrations, and devotions, there were two words that permeated throughout the most desolate time of my spiritual life.
Why?
This word came over and over, and it was almost always followed by empty space. The silence of God and Mary, or so it seemed, was the only answer I received.
It felt like the “because” I spoke about last week.
Let’s go back to the child pestering their parents with “why?” over and over. After the parents give little explainations, they eventually stop, turn to their child, look them in the eye, and they say “because.”
There is something palpable in the silence which follows the because. It silences the child, and it draws them backwards.
Something in the silence changes the conversation.
What is in the silence? What is it that draws the child to stop speaking? What is in the eyes of their parents that changes the conversation from stressful curiousity to peaceful dialogue again? Where can we find this in our own lives?
It is the second word that filled my journal.
Love.
Although we often try to define love through dictionaries, songs, physical experiences, stories, movies, and images, there is no proper to way to define love. It is something that we feel in our very core, and it changes the entire conversation. However, because love is not fully felt in our natural senses, it takes going outside of ourselves to see it, to know it, to love it.
Why do we have to carry a cross?
So that others may grow in love.
Jesus was God. Therefore, He already had all of the love in universe in His heart. He gained nothing by dying on The Cross. However, by taking on hardships of this life, Jesus drew everyone in to Himself.
He showed us what it meant to love others.
Not only that, but He called us to love everyone around us.
Something that struck me over Holy Week was how much Jesus wanted His Apostles to form a community. He washed their feet so that they might wash the feet of others. Some of His last words were giving His mother to The Church, and to the whole world. He instituted the Eucharist so that He could physically be with each soul that would come to love Him.
To hold a cross is painful, but the silence is not meant to dishearten us.
The silence is there to change the conversation.
When we are experiencing heartache, our hearts are opened up so that others may come in and love us. Most of the time the souls given to us are completely unexpected, and they are probably not the holy and perfect people you would expect.
But that’s the point.
Jesus came to bring love to the loveless, and He calls us to do the same.
There is one important part of this that we need to be clear on: the silence is real, but if you do not allow yourself in to the silence, you will not be able to let people love you. As such, the suffering only becomes more and more unbearable.
Like I said, I was in the worst of sorts. I kept ranting to my family and friends about how upset I was with God. I would ask why over and over and over, but nothing seemed to come from my prayers. Finally, I gave up trying, just as I said last week.
Suddenly the souls I never expected to help me became God’s way of teaching me what love truly was. The little ones that He called me to love each day suddenly started to fight for me against my persecutors. Souls that I thought would never accept me slowly started to celebrate my quirks.
I realized that I did not need my “training wheels” in order to love my Jesus anymore.
By uniting my suffering with His, I came to love and be loved.
To exemplify this: I wrote this in my journal as a letter to another soul, but I discovered that perhaps it was Jesus speaking to me in love all along.
Dearly Beloved
“The silence will not destroy you. That silence is My way of changing the conversation. St. Teresa of Calcutta’s silence turned her to the poor. Your silence turned you to the lonely, particularly those in silence. I cannot say where your silence will take you. All I can say is that I am here, sitting silently, and I will not leave. God has entrusted your cross to my heart, and if you so will it, I will carry your cross as far as I can. My heart is soft, and it has been broken open. There are no secrets, and I am as real as they come. You may not know what God wants, but you canknow that He will never leave us alone. As He calls me…I will be here with an open heart for you to rest in.”
When life gets difficult, and you want to say “why” one more time…stop for a moment and listen to the silence. There, as the conversation changes, you will hear the answer you have been waiting to hear your whole life.
“Because I love you.”
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