"A Little While..."

"A Little While..."

Reflection on our daily Cross
By: Fr. Voigt (Resistance)

Can there be any "gain" without some "pain"?  Every coach knows that if he wants to capture a championship then those players must push their bodies to the limit and it hurts!

Every man, woman and child knows that suffering brings them wisdom in various forms.  When the little child touches that hot stove after mother's warning, his finger burns with pain.  He will never challenge the fire again; he has learned his lesson.  Now our Lord speaks to those He loves with a phase that is repeated seven times in a matter of fourteen lines.
"A little while and you will not see Me."  Then "A little while and you will see Me."

What is this "little while" but the experience of the death He was to undergo.  It is a cry to suffer pain that He might gain souls.  Like a mighty martial arts champion He embraced a death with all the pain possible to wrest from the devil souls of such great value.  He was battling for you and me and for a little while he experienced the pain that would bring to the Holy Trinity an infinite joy.  

 

Consider what He said about the woman who is about to give birth.  For a little while the pain penetrates her very being but when the man child is born, she forgets the pain for joy that a man has come into this world.  In our lives prior to any birth that will be pain.  Jesus' suffering is the mystical pain prior to the "birth" of the Mystical Body formed by each and every soul that accepts the pain of the Master.  Pierced are the hands and feet that follow Me.  Can he have followed far if he has no scars?  

From the depths of the pain which we are asked to endure we yield the Person of Christ in our flesh.  Prepare for pain that you might gain an eternal joy.  In suffering we pass from a temporal existence and attitude to one which is eternal. Suffering will encompass the total person until it has achieved its purpose. Suffering is not eternal and its pain will conclude with the joy of birth into an eternal life if we but trust and love the Lord.  

 

Every one of us will be tested in fire as gold is tried and purified so the precious soul receives the divine fire of pain to prove its worth.  We can reject but in our rejection we lose.  Our Father is the One who writes the rules for our salvation and we but discover them little by little.

We are so slow and dimwitted, but imagine ourselves so wise and astute.  A seed produces fruit only if it is crushed by the soil; a butterfly is born with the death of the caterpillar; and hearts are readied for eternal happiness only through sorrow and pain.  May we joyfully accept the planned provisions of our beloved Father for the sanctification of our souls.

 

May God bless you with just the cross you need to become the saint He desires.

In the hearts of Jesus, Mary and Joseph,

Fr. Richard Voigt