The Nine S': Suffering

Suffering seems most difficult to discuss as a standard of formation in living the Gospel Rule.  Perhaps the difficulty lies in the reality of pain.  Pain as a means of spiritual growth, in fact, the main means of spiritual growth, in fact as the means of our souls' salvation, confounds human instinct.  But it is human instinct in tendencies to temptations and acts of sin that required Christ's obedience to the will of the Father in order to redeem fallen mankind.  

Sometimes called the Passion mystery, termed by St. Augustine a "happy fault", Christ's way of suffering is key to life on earth and life in heaven.  That is why, in considering the stairway to heaven, each step is built upon cross-beam supports.  The very banister consists of cross-like uprights with connecting, horizontal handrail.  We must place our feet firmly upon the reality of suffering, as well as grasp the spiritual necessity of death, over and over, step by step.

Suffering and the next s of selflessness, hold the fourth and fifth pivotal position within the Nine S'.  We do not need to seek suffering, for suffering is a gift given by God to anyone desiring to live in Christ in the present moment and to climb the stairway to heaven.  The grace of suffering comes gift-wrapped for any occasion, and we must open and embrace with joy the blessed event.  Did not heaven and earth rejoice at Christ's birth, an innocent baby swaddled, then stalked by the many sorrows of the sin-sunk world of our human depravity?  From birth onward the Son of God suffered in His human form, just as those around Him suffered, just as we all do. Yet we are not yet perfected in suffering.

It is the triumph over suffering that became Christ's victory herald, and we must examine, expose, and espouse His way of the seed, crushed and fallen to the ground, buried, in order to bring forth much fruit (John 12:24).  Suffering is the seed of salvation, the seed of our success in living in Christ, the mystical force that with selflessness, creates and propels the soul in Christiological, co-redemptive unification.

The physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual effects of suffering are painful. We exist in mortal bodies reacting from human instincts to pain. Yet the unitive reality of suffering through, with and in Christ's salvific suffering births selfless love. God is love.  It is His love, whether or not of our conscious awareness, that brings the joy, and that, too, whether or not consciously exhibited.

We do not need to feel or be aware of the joy or the love.  We only need to allow selflessly our lives to suffering whatever Jesus Christ, our Beloved, is suffering in any present moment.  His love instills the mystical means for spiritually ascending and descending on the stairway to heaven.  

Both movements are necessary, for our souls are lifted through mystical motion in order to learn and grow within Christ's loving union of selfless suffering, and our souls simultaneously descend into the temporal realm of redemptive action and reaction, of self and of and for our fellow man.  This is Christ's way of the Cross.

When the cyclical, spiraling, ascending and descending crescendo to the purity of perfection that God wills for any given soul, and the mission for which we were destined is fulfilled, then there is death no longer of the self, but also of the body, and the soul ascends to the spiritual realms there to live eternally.  

As to further mission, we realize the on-going love and interaction of the Most Holy Trinity, the Virgin Mary, the angels and saints. In and from heaven there is spiritual utilization of souls who in perfected love praise God, who intercede and interact by divine commission, with and for souls on earth.  

The reality and purpose of suffering as a beautiful means of personal sanctification as well as tremendous spiritual benefit to souls and the efforts of the Church, are worth further study and prayer.  Meditate upon the seed crushed and allow this Word of Jesus to permeate our beings.  Accept and embrace crosses bestowed. Living suffering in Christ's way assures life for and benefits our souls, the Body of Christ, His Church.

By offering the blessed sufferings (gifted to us innumerably in our earthly lives) to Christ for His glory and divine dispensation, we will experience in Christ His providential victory over death.  Regardless the earthly, human pain, this faithful, mystical reality in selfless suffering is sheer bliss.