The first question ever asked in the history of the world and the one which brought us pain and woe, was the question, "Why?" It was Satan, the first sceptic who asked the question, "Why did God command you not to eat from any trees in the Garden of Paradise?" - Gen. 3:1 - From that time until this, our poor little minds have asked many "whys" but none more often than: "Why is there pain in the world?" "Why does suffering exist side by side with luxury?"

This problem of pain has a symbol and the symbol is the cross. But why is the cross typical of the problem of suffering? Because it is made up of two bars, one horizontal and the other vertical. The horizontal bars is the bar of death, for death is prone,prostate, flat. The vertical bar is the bar of life, for all life is erect, upright. The crossing of one bar with the other signifies the contradiction of life and death, joy and sorrow, laughter and tears, pleasure and pain, our will and God's will. The only way a cross can ever be made is by laying the bar of joy against the bar of sorrow; or to put it another way our will is the horizontal bar, God's will is the vertical bar; as soon as we place our desires and our wills against God's desires and God's will, we form a cross. Thus the cross is the symbol of pain and suffering.

If the cross is the symbol of the problem of pain, the Crucifix is its solution. The difference between the cross and the Crucifix is Christ. Once our Lord, Who is Love itself, mounts the cross, He reveals how pain can be transformed through love into a joyful sacrifice, how those who sow in tears may reap in joy, how those who mourn may be comforted, how those who suffer with Him may reign with Him, and how those who take up a cross for a brief Good Friday will possess happiness for an eternal Easter Sunday. Love is, as it were, the joint where the horizontal bar of death and the vertical bar of life become reconciled in the doctrine that all life is through death.

Here is where the solution of Our Lord differs from every other solution of the problem of pain, even those solutions which mask themselves under the name of Christian. The world meets the problem of pain either by denying it or by attempting to make it insoluble. It is denied by a peculiar process of self-hypnotism which would say that pain is imaginary and due to want of faith; it is made insoluble by an attempt to escape or flee it, for the modern man feels it is better to sin than to suffer. Our Lord, on the contrary, does not deny pain; He does not attempt to escape it. He faces it and by doing so proves that suffering is not foreign even to a God become Man.

Pain has, therefore, a definite part to play in life. It is a remarkable fact that our sensibilities are more developed for pain than for pleasure and our power for suffering is in excess of our power for joy. Pleasure increases to a point of satiety and we feel that if it went beyond that point, it would become a positive torture. Pain, on the contrary, goes on increasing and increasing even when we have cried "enough"; it reaches a point where we feel we can bear it no longer and yet it unburdens itself until it kills,

I believe the reason why we have greater capacity for pain than pleasure is because God intended that those who lead a sound moral life, should drink that last drop of the chalice of bitterness here below, for there is no bitterness in Heaven. But the morally good never quite sound the depths of pleasure here below, for greater happiness awaits them in Heaven. But whatever the real reason, the truth still remains that on the cross Our Lord shows that love can take no other form when it is brought into contact with evil than the form of pain. To overcome evil with good, one must suffer unjustly. The lesson of the Crucifix, then, is that pain is never to be isolated or separated from love. The Crucifix does not mean pain; it means sacrifice. In other words, it tells us, first, pain is sacrifice without love; and secondly, that sacrifice is pain with love.

First, pain is sacrifice without love. The Crucifixion is not a glorification of pain as pain. The Christian attitude of mortification has sometimes been misrepresented as idealizing pain, as if God were more pleased with us when we suffered than when we rejoiced. No! Pain in itself has no sanctifying influence!

The natural effect of pain is to individualize us, centre our thoughts on ourselves and make our infirmity the excuse for every comfort and attention. All the afflictions of the body such as penance, mortification have no tendency in themselves to make men better. They often make a man worse. When pain is divorced from love, it leads to man to wish others were as he is; it makes him cruel, hateful, bitter. When pain is unsanctified by affection, it scars, burn up all our finer sensibilities of the soul and leaves the soul fierce and brutal. Pain as pain, is not an ideal: it is a curse when separated from love, for rather than making one's soul better, it makes it worse by scorching it.......

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -