Martyrdom of St. John the Baptist
One
The Suffering of John the Baptist
You or someone you love may be suffering today. It may be something temporary, chronic, or terminal. There may be no human remedy. And very naturally you may feel, as I often do, you may feel abandoned, bewildered, afraid, and discouraged. John the Baptist probably felt all the same things.
He spoke up, when no one else would, when King Herod took his brother’s wife as his own. John said, “This is wrong, it’s adultery.” So, Herod arrested John and threw him in a very nasty prison. Probably had him chained to a wall. Very little if any food or water. Rats, fleas, lice, all the usual cellmates. And darkness. Lots of darkness. I am certain John experienced great physical, mental, and emotional suffering waiting for his impending execution.
Then in Matthew 11 John, from his prison cell, sends a few of his disciples who came to visit him to go and ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or have we got to wait for someone else?” Basically, I think John’s question was this: Jesus, I believe you are God, so why wont you help me. Why won’t you get me out of this prison of suffering?
So why does God allow suffering?
Two
Why does God allow suffering?
God did not create suffering. It entered the world through our own actions, specifically through original sin, which is the result of humanity’s misuse of free will. Suffering and death are consequences of this choice.
God, in His infinite goodness and omnipotence, allows evil and suffering to persist because He respects our freedom. Moreover, He possesses the power to bring forth good even from the most profound evils. So, if we or a loved one suffers, then we should do all we can to remedy it. And when we can’t change it, we are invited to accept it with trust because we know that God works all things for good for those who love him.
Three
That is all great theology…
But I still don’t want suffering and I don’t want my loved ones to suffer. So, I beg God to take it away. He doesn’t. And I am angry and afraid and discouraged. What is God doing?
Ok, here we need the insight of John of the Cross. He reminds us that God has a greater plan for our lives than we do. God wants to make us like Himself. He wants us to share in his divine nature and become like God. (At least that’s what He tells us in the Bible in 1 John 3).
There are two problems: First, I want things of this world more than I want to be like God. I have disordered attachments from which I need to be detached, purified. Second, my soul is too weak to receive God. It’s like putting new wine into old wineskins. The new wine will burst the old skins. We need new wineskins. Our soul needs to be strengthened and enlarged to receive God. Suffering is the greatest means to do both, to purify and to strengthen if we will just accept with trust.
Four
Listen to what John of the Cross says, “Here it ought to be pointed out why so few reach this high state of perfect union with God. It…is not that God wishes only a few of these spirits to be so elevated; he would rather want all to be perfect, but he finds few vessels that will endure so lofty and sublime a work. Since he tries them in little things and finds them so weak that they immediately flee from work, unwilling to be subject to the least discomfort and mortification, it follows that not finding them strong and faithful in that little [Mt. 25:21, 23], in which he favored them by beginning to hew and polish them, he realizes that they will be much less strong in these greater trials. “
“As a result, he proceeds no further in purifying them and raising them from the dust of the earth through the toil of mortification. They are in need of greater constancy and fortitude than they showed. There are many who desire to advance and persistently beseech God to bring them to this state of perfection. Yet when God wills to conduct them through the initial trials and mortifications, as is necessary, they are unwilling to suffer them and they shun them, flee from the narrow road of life [Mt. 7:14] and seek the broad road of their own consolation…thus they do not allow God to begin to grant their petition. They are like useless containers, for although they desire to reach the state of the perfect they do not want to be guided by the path of trials that leads to it. They hardly even begin to walk along this road by submitting to what is least, that is, to ordinary sufferings.”
John is explaining why so few people reach the goal of life, which is transforming union with God, and why so many have to go to purgatory after death rather than straight into heaven, because the soul must be purified of disordered desires and strengthened to hold the full measure of God’s gift of Himself. God wants to give more but we tend to balk at the strengthening process. The Living Flame of Love, 2, 27
Five
The strengthening comes not through the suffering or the trials in themselves but through the growth of faith, hope, and love. Now, this is very important. Faith, hope, and love are infused virtues. Only God can give them. So our job is to continuously ask God to give us a greater faith or trust in Him, to give us a greater hope which means to desire him more than anything else and to love him above all.
Basically we have to ask God to come and do in us what we can’t do and won’t do on our own. Say, “Jesus I can’t endure this. But you can, therefore you must. So I trust in you!”