There is a part of the Scourging at the Pillar scene in the movie The Passion of the Christ from which I am trying daily to take inspiration. After being brutally whipped, Christ stands back up and holds onto the pillar tightly. The message I get from that is when God gives us suffering, we must embrace it as something great because it is redemptive.
The last couple weeks have been more challenging with my health, with daily GI upset and diarrhea, up until today now thanks be to God subsiding, which makes me feel like I have the flu on top of my body racked in pain. Bad thoughts that try to push in are that I can’t enjoy this Fall weather like I normally do and all the activities that brings, but also a reminder that I am presently somewhat incapacitated from ordinary daily life.
We all go through life looking around the next bend, imagining what will make us happy: what is for dinner, weekend plans, vacation plans, holiday plans, future plans to explore the world and life. But to a certain extent it is a dream. I have often been in a trance-like state trying to endure the hardships of daily life, big and small, hoping for those pleasures around the next bend, for some promise of joy to happen soon, when too often what occurs turns out to be dull and transient, when mixed in with all the harsh variables of daily existence.
This is not to say God’s creation is ugly, or that God doesn’t want for us some measure of happiness in this world, not as an end in itself by as a means to our eternal happiness which is an end in itself, but God does not guarantee that nor do we always achieve that despite our best efforts. I’ll give just one example, my maternal grandmother, who suffered great poverty her whole life, spousal abuse, and raising seven children on her own, suffering from chronic depression I think or sadness for her condition, which she did not choose.
Right now my task is to be thankful for the gift of life even with its miseries, because it is the narrow path to eternal happiness. I’m thankful for all of my positive experiences since birth as they point to the promises of heaven. But part of my present cross is to surrender all of my expectations for the near and possibly distant future because of my still relatively new medical condition.
I do pray a perpetual novena for my healing, and have made a major bargain with God should He heal me, in terms of what I will do and give up once recovered, but my symptoms (see last blog post) are so serious and lasting, it is better I place all my imagination in the gifts of heaven, than dreaming about what might be around the next corner. Such as Fall outings and holiday plans, as I would normally envision each year. So my endeavor is to resist the gravitational force of despair into the abyss, but instead stand up and embrace my cross, like our Lord did, focused on His kingdom which is not of this world. In other words, not to give up on my life, but rather radically surrender it to God’s will. Which is an undertaking indeed.
All the camping trips, get togethers, celebrations, decorations, dreams and plans are in the end, in the final outcome, merely dust, in the sense that Scripture says “dust though art, to dust though shalt return,” in every aspect of our mortal, passing lives. They all in themselves have no lasting value and fade away. All that matters is life with God in heaven.
And so if I feel myself scourged at the pillar, I won’t just lay there on the ground like a helpless victim, but stand back up and embrace the pillar, just as Christ did, and as later that day he embraced His cross.