Salvific Pain
May 26, 2026
Hello! How is each and every one? We just celebrated Pentecost Sunday, when the
Holy Spirit came down upon the first one hundred and twenty disciples in the
form of tongues of fire. It was then
when the dwelling of the Holy Spirit in the Church was first visibly
manifested. Earlier on Easter Sunday, He was given to the Apostles for the
forgiveness of sins. The Holy Spirit
will dwell in the Church until the end of time (Q&A Catholic Catechism, Fr. M. Guzman).
The Church celebrates on Monday after Pentecost Sunday the feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church. We revert to praying the Angelus instead of the Regina Coeli which we prayed during the Easter Season. On Thursday after Pentecost the Church celebrates Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Eternal High Priest.
This coming Sunday we will be celebrating the Solemnity of The Most Holy Trinity. In God there are three divine Persons--the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Let us now continue with the first word of Christ on the Cross and this time on Pain (From The Cries of Jesus from the Cross, A Fulton J. Sheen’s Anthology).
Pain
The first view regards pain as opaque, like a stone wall; the other view regards it as transparent, like a windowpane. The way we will react to pain depends entirely on our philosophy of life. As the poet has put it:
Two men looked out through their prison bars;
The one saw mud, the other stars.
In like manner, there are those who, looking upon a rose, would say: “Isn’t it a pity that those roses have thorns”; while others would say: “Isn’t it consoling that those thorns have roses!” These two attitudes are manifested in the two thieves crucified on either side of Our Blessed Lord. The thief on the right is the model for those for whom pain has a meaning; the thief on the left is the symbol of unconsecrated suffering.
Consider first the thief on the left. He
suffered no more than the thief on the right, but he began and ended his
crucifixion with a curse. Never for a moment did he correlate his sufferings
with the Man on the central Cross. Our Lord’s prayer of forgiveness meant no
more to that thief than the flight of a bird. He saw no more purpose in his
suffering than a fly sees purpose in the windowpane that floods man’s
habitation with God’s warmth and sunlight. Because he could not assimilate his
pain and make it turn to the nourishment of his soul, pain turned against him
as a foreign substance taken into the stomach turns against it and infects and
poisons the whole system.
That is why he became bitter, why his mouth became like a crater of hate, and why he cursed the very Lord who could have shepherded him into peace and paradise.
The world today is full of those who, like the thief on the left, see no meaning in pain. Knowing nothing of the Redemption of Our Lord, they are unable to fit pain into a pattern; it becomes just an odd patch on the crazy quilt of life. Life becomes so wholly unpredictable for them that “a troubled manhood follows their baffled youth.”
Never having thought of God as anything more than a name, they are now unable to fit the stark realities of life into His divine plan. That is why so many who cease to believe in God become cynics, killing not only themselves but, in a certain sense, even the beauties of flowers and the faces of children, for whom they refuse to live.
The lesson of the thief on the left is clear:
pain of itself does not make us better; it is very apt to make us worse. No man
was ever better simply because he had an earache. Unspiritualized suffering
does not improve man; it degenerates him. The thief at the left is no better
for his crucifixion: it sears him, burns him, and tarnishes his soul.
Refusing to think of pain as related to anything else, he ends by thinking only of himself and who would take him down from the cross. So it is with those who have lost their faith in God. To them Our Lord on a Cross is only an event in the history of the Roman Empire; He is not a message of hope or a proof of love.
They would not have a tool in their hands five minutes without discovering its purpose, but they live their lives without ever having inquired its meaning. Because they have no reason for living, suffering embitters them, poisons them, and finally, the great door of life’s opportunity is closed in their faces, and like the thief on the left, they go out into the night unblessed.
Now, look at the thief on the right — the symbol of those for whom pain has a meaning. At first, he did not understand it and therefore joined in the curses with the thief on the left. But just as sometimes a flash of lightning will illumine the path we have missed, so, too, the Savior’s forgiveness of His executioners illumined for the thief the road of mercy.
He began to see that if pain had no reason, Jesus would not have embraced it. If the Cross had no purpose, Jesus would not have climbed it. Surely He who claimed to be God would never have taken that badge of shame unless it could be transformed and transmuted to some holy purpose.
Pain was beginning to be comprehensible to the
thief; for the present, at least, it meant an occasion to do penance for his
life of crime. And the moment that light came to him, he rebuked the thief on
the left saying: “Neither dost thou fear God, seeing thou art under the same
condemnation? And we indeed [suffer] justly, for we receive the due reward of
our deeds; but this man hath done no evil” (Luke 23:40–41).
Now he saw pain as doing to his soul something like that which fire does to gold: burning away the dross. Or something like that which fever does to disease: killing the germs. Pain was dropping scales away from his eyes; and, turning toward the central Cross, he saw no longer a crucified man but a Heavenly King.
Surely, He who can pray for pardon for His murderers will not cast off a thief: “Lord, remember me when thou shalt come into thy kingdom.” Such great faith found its reward: “Amen I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:42–43).
Pain in itself is not unbearable; it is the
failure to understand its meaning that is unbearable. If that thief did not see
purpose in pain, he would never have saved his soul. Pain can be the death of
our soul, or it can be its life.
It all depends on whether we link it up with Him who, “having joy set before him, endured the cross” (Heb. 12:2). One of the greatest tragedies in the world is wasted pain. Pain without relation to the cross is like an unsigned check — without value. But once we have it countersigned with the signature of the Savior on the Cross, it takes on an infinite value.
A feverish brow that never throbs in unison with a head crowned with thorns, or an aching hand never borne in patience with a hand on the Cross, is sheer waste. The world is worse for that pain when it might have been so much the better.
All the sickbeds in the world, therefore, are either on the right side of the Cross or on the left; their position is determined by whether, like the thief on the left, they ask to be taken down, or, like the thief on the right, they ask to be taken up.
It is not so much what people suffer that makes the world mysterious; it is rather how much they miss when they suffer. They seem to forget that even as children they made obstacles in their games in order to have something to overcome.
Why, then, when they grow into man’s estate, should there not be prizes won by effort and struggle? Cannot the spirit of man rise with adversity as the bird rises against the resistance of the wind? Do not the game fish swim upstream? Must not the alabaster box be broken to fill the house with ointment? Must not the chisel cut away the marble to bring out the form? Must not the seed falling to the ground die before it can spring forth into life? Must not the little streams speed into the ocean to escape their stagnant self-content? Must no grapes be crushed that there may be wine to drink, and wheat ground that there may be bread to eat?
Why, then, cannot pain be made redemption? Why,
under the alchemy of divine love, cannot crosses be turned into crucifixes? Why
cannot chastisements be regarded as penances? Why cannot we use a cross to
become Godlike? We cannot become like Him in His power: we cannot become like
Him in His knowledge.
There is only one way we can become like Him, and that is in the way He bore His sorrows and His Cross. And that way was with love. “Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). It is love that makes pain bearable.
As long as we feel it is doing good for another, or even for our own soul by increasing the glory of God, it is easier to bear. A mother keeps a vigil at the bedside of her sick child. The world calls it “fatigue,” but she calls it love.
A little child was commanded by his mother not to walk the picket fence. He disobeyed and fell, maimed himself, and was never able to walk again. Being told of his misfortune, he said to his mother: “I know I will never walk again; I know it is my fault, but if you will go on loving me, I can stand anything.” So it is with our own pains.
If we can be assured that God still loves and
cares, then we shall find joy even in carrying on His redemptive work — by
being redeemers with a small r, as He is Redeemer with a capital R. Then will
come to us the vision of the difference between pain and sacrifice. Pain is
sacrifice without love. Sacrifice is pain with love.
When we understand this, we shall have an answer for those who feel that God should have let us sin without pain:
The cry of earth’s anguish went up unto God —
“Lord, take away pain —
The shadow that darkens the world Thou hast made,
The close-coiling chain
That strangles the heart, the burden that weighs
On the wings that would soar —
Lord, take away pain from the world Thou hast
made
That it loves Thee the more.”
Then answered the Lord to the world He had
made,
“Shall I take away pain?
And with it, the power of the soul to endure
Made strong by the strain?
Shall I take away pity that knits heart to heart
And sacrifice high?
Will ye lose all your heroes who lift from the
flame
White brows to the sky?
Shall I take away love that redeems with a price
And smiles through the loss —
Can ye spare from the lives that would climb
unto mine
The Christ on His Cross?” (George Stewart, “God and Pain.”).
And now this final lesson. You and I often ask God for many favors that are never granted. We can imagine the thief on the right, during his life, asking God for many favors, and especially for wealth, which was probably not granted. On the other hand, though God does not always grant our material favors, there is one prayer He always grants.
There is a favor that you and I can ask of God this very moment if we had the courage to do it, and that favor would be granted before the day is over. That prayer, which God has never refused, and will never refuse is the prayer for suffering. Ask Him to send you a cross, and you will receive it!
But why does He not always answer our prayers for an increase in salary, for larger commissions, for more money? Why did He not answer the prayer of the thief on the left to be taken down from the cross, and why did He answer the prayer of the thief on the right to forgive his sins?
Because material favors draw us away from Him, but the cross always draws us to Him. And God does not want the world to have us!
He wants us Himself because He died for
us!
— The Rainbow of Sorrow
The above excerpt needs time to assimilate and digest beneficially. As always I would suggest bringing it up to Our Lord in the quiet moments of our dialogue with Him during the day. And since we are now in ordinary time after we celebrated Pentecost Sunday when the Holy Spirit descended upon all of us, allow me to share with you the following prayer to Him and from here onwards may you and I cultivate a loving relationship with Him.
We
stand before You, Holy Spirit, as we gather together in Your name. With You
alone to guide us, make Yourself at home in our hearts; Teach us the way we
must go and how we are to pursue it. We are weak and sinful; do not let us
promote disorder. Do not let ignorance lead us down the wrong path nor
partiality influence our actions. Let us find in You our unity so that we may
journey together to eternal life and not stray from the way of truth and what
is right. All this we ask of You, who are at work in every place and time, in
the communion of the Father and the Son, forever and ever. Amen.
See you in the next post, “May tomorrow be a perfect day; may you find love and
laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care; ‘til He brings us
together again.”
Affectionately,
Guadalupinky
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