Suffering Archives - Spes in Domino

April 5, 2022 iacobusm Lent and Easter

Legions of Angels, the Adulteress, and Christ’s Sacrifice

**Christ and the Adulterous Woman,** *by Nicholas Poussin, 1653*

“Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” (Matthew 46: 53-54)

Legions of Angels

Many Years ago I taught in a (more or less) Catholic high school. One day a certain student wanted to know how many soldiers were in a Roman legion. Around 6,000, I answered. “Well,” he offered, “Jesus said that if he asked, his Father would send him twelve legions of angels.” I acknowledged that he had (see Matthew, 26:53). The student’s face then broke into a huge grin as he blurted out, “That’s a whole lot of angels!”

I wasn’t sure at the time, and I’m unsure still more than two decades later, what my student was getting at. Was he making a joke of some sort? Did he really admire Christ’s power to command the hosts of Heaven? I do know that Jesus was serious. His point wasn’t the exact number of angels he could summon. Now, I’m sure that the number twelve is meant to correspond to the twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve apostles, etc., but that’s secondary. Christ’s immediate point was that he had all the power he could want. He had the power to save Himself . . . if he chose.

How Then Should The Scriptures Be Fulfilled ?

**The Arrest of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane**, *studio of Giuseppe Cesari, c.1600*

It will be helpful to look at the context for the comment about legions of angels. Jesus’ affirmation of his authority over angelic armies comes during Matthew’s Passion Narrative. He is in the Garden of Gethsemane with his Apostles. At that moment Judas arrives, “and with him a great crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the elders of the people” (Matthew 26:47). Judas identifies Jesus with a kiss,

Then they came up and laid hands on Jesus and seized him. And behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword, and struck the slave of the high priest, and cut off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” (Matthew 46: 50-54)

Jesus surrenders willingly to the violent mob, not because he can’t free himself, but because he chooses to surrender. He allows the crowd to take him, knowing that it means an agonizing death by crucifixion.

The Passiontide

This is a good time to talk about the Passion of Jesus, by the way, because we are now in that part of the Liturgical Year that we call the Passiontide. This is the last two weeks of Lent, when we focus our Lenten observance more explicitly on the suffering and death of Jesus. The transition to Passiontide, unfortunately, is no longer as obvious as it was when we called the Fifth Sunday Passion Sunday. The TLM still follows the the traditional practice; in the ordinary form, however, Passion Sunday has now moved one week later to combine with Palm Sunday.

While it may not be as obvious as in the traditional arrangement, the liturgy is still pointing us more directly in the direction of events of the Triduum. Consider the Gospel reading for this past Sunday, the Woman Caught in Adultery from John’s Gospel (John 8:1-11). As in the Passion narrative we have a violent mob, eager for blood. The difference is, here Jesus does frustrate the crowd’s murderous designs, and he does it without so much as a single cohort of angels.

The Guilty And The Innocent

**King of Sorrows,** *by William Burton Shakespeare, 1897*

That’s not the only difference between the two passages. Isn’t it interesting that the woman Jesus saves really is guilty: she was caught in the act. Jesus himself, on the other hand, is totally without sin, and yet he allows himself to be taken. In fact, it is because of her sin (and mine, and yours) that Jesus surrenders his own life.

That doesn’t make sense, without the eyes of faith. But of course, “the wisdom of this world is folly with God” (1 Corinthians 3:19). And in fact, that surrender of his own innocent life is an act of power greater than anything the “wisdom” of this world can imagine. All the legions of angels together can’t match its power. For the sake of sinners such as the adulteress (and me, and you), Jesus Christ conquered Death.

Yes, Christ has freed us from death. The freedom he purchased for us by his own free choice, however, has a purpose. After he tells the woman, “Nor do I condemn you” Jesus adds, “Go and sin no more.” Our liberty in Christ isn’t license. He didn’t suffer and die on the cross in order to enable us to continue our lives of sin. He gave us freedom so that we, too, might freely choose the good. It’s an awesome gift, and an awesome responsibility.

This coming Sunday we will celebrate Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday. Over the week that follows we will relive the events of the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ. Let’s remember that, if he chooses, Jesus can ask his Father for twelve legions of angels. Instead, Jesus chooses to suffer and die: not because he’s guilty, but because we are.

March 22, 2022 iacobusm Lent and Easter

The Spirit of Lent: Two Choruses from Handel’s Messiah

The Spirit of Lent

**Flagellation of Christ**, by Michael Pacher, c. 1495-98

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5-4)

Capturing the Spirit of Lent

The Spirit of Lent is penitence and sorrow. If I may state the obvious, penitence and sorrow are not a lot of fun. Rewarding, salvific in fact, yes . . . but not a cause for joy until later, when we realize their fruits. Not surprisingly, composers creating music for Lent need to make music that’s moving and beautiful, but at the same time appropriately somber.

As we saw in a previous post, George Friedrich Handel originally composed his oratorio The Messiah for Lent. Much of the music, however, is far too sumptuous for this most penitential of seasons, which is why we have come instead to associate Handel’s greatest work with Advent and Christmas. Nevertheless, the sections of the oratorio dealing with the Passion and Death of Christ powerfully capture the spirit of the liturgical season leading up to the Triduum and Good Friday.

Grief and Healing

**Christ Carrying the Cross**, by El Greco, c. 1580

The selection below is a good example. The first part is the chorus “Surely he hath borne our griefs,” a musical meditation on Isaiah 53, verse 4 and the first part of verse 5. Handel’s libretto, following the King James translation of the Bible, reads:

Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised.
The chastisement of our peace was upon him.

The second piece completes verse 5. In a haunting fugue, the chorus repeats the line: “and with his stripes we are healed.”

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find a clip on Vimeo containing both of them, although “With his stripes” comes immediately after “Surely he hath borne our griefs” in The Messiah. There are good performances of the two togeher on another platform. Sadly, Google owns it, and I reject Google and all its works and empty promises. Well, as Hannibal said before leading his army across the Alps, Aut viam inveniam aut faciam! (“I’ll either find a way or I’ll make one”). I made my own video and posted it to the Vidyard platform. The music is a perfomance by AD LIBITUM Orchestra and Chorus. The images are Christ Carrying the Cross, by El Greco, painted c.1580, and the Flagellation of Christ, by Michael Pacher, c. 1495-98.

March 5, 2022 iacobusm Lent and Easter

1st Sunday of Lent: Call on the Name of the Lord

**Christ Tempted by the Devil**, *by John Ritto Penniman, 1818*

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

(from “Do not go gentle into that good night, by ” Dylan Thomas)

The opening lines of Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gentle into that good night” are the voice of a young man urging his father to fight back against imminent death, to “rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Most of us, I think, when we reach our later years have the wisdom to understand the situation a little better; my own octogenarian father remarked recently, in reference to this poem, “but I don’t want to rage against the dying of the light.” But again, the narrative voice is that of someone much younger (Thomas himself was in his thirties when he composed it).

All the same, there’s something universally human about the refusal to “go gentle into that good night.” We want to be masters of our world, and we want to leave a lasting legacy behind us when we do go. We want, as the Roman poet Horace put it, to erect “a monument more lasting than bronze.”

It’s a forlorn hope. As Thomas’ poem points out, all of us, the “wise,” the “good,” even “wild men,” learn at the end that our “frail deeds might have danced in the green bay” . . . but fell short of our hopes. As Ecclesiastes says, all is vanity.

The Good News, as Christians know, is that while our ambitions for ourselves might be vanity, our lives and even our failures in this world are not in vain. That is, if we turn our lives over to God, and join our failures to the suffering of Jesus Christ.

That’s the message of the First Sunday of Lent. Our Gospel reading today, for instance, is Satan’s temptation of Jesus in the desert (Luke 4:1-13). The Devil offers Jesus the same temptations of mastery that attract all of us: feeding our appetitites without restriction (“command this stone to become bread”), exercising power without limit (“I shall give to you all this power and glory”), and, in short, doing whatever we want without suffering consequences:

“If you are the Son of God,
throw yourself down from here, for it is written:
            He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,
and:
            With their hands they will support you,
            lest you dash your foot against a stone.”

Jesus, however, has “taken the form of a slave” (Philippians 2:7), and accepts human limitations. He refuses all the allurements of Satan.

The example Jesus gives us, of rejecting the mirage of mastery in the here and now, and instead relying on God his Father, sets the agenda for the Season of Lent. The austerities of Lent are intended to teach us that we don’t need the things we think we need: none of those things can save us. That applies even to our religion, if we behave as if religion is there to put God to work for us, rather than to lead us to God. Notice in the quote above how the Evil One cites Holy Scripture, Psalm 91 (which is also our responsory psalm today), in his effort to separate Jesus from His Father.

Jesus, of course, knows that the images of Angels guarding us aren’t a promise that God will protect us from the natural consequences of our actions in this world. And haven’t we all seen, over and over again, that bad things happen to even the best people? The best person of all, in fact, Jesus Christ, although sinless, was sentenced to an excruciating death on The Cross. We see the fulfillment of Psalm 91 in The Resurrection, God’s promise that for he “who [says] to the LORD, ‘My refuge and fortress, my God in whom I trust’” God says “I will be with him in distress; I will deliver him and glorify him.”

The message that we need to detach ourselves from reliance on the world in order to put ourselves under God’s protection is a major theme in the other readings as well. In the Old Testament reading we find Moses reminding the Hebrews how, when they were bound in hopeless slavery to Pharaoh, God “brought us out of Egypt with his strong hand and outstretched arm.” (Deuteronomy 26:8). St. Paul, in the second reading, tells the Romans that

if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord
and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead,
you will be saved. (Romans 10:9)

*Detail from the Ghent Altarpiece, by Jan van Eyck, c. 1430*

St. Paul tells us we need to turn to The Lord with everything we have, inside and out. It’s no good just to say the words, nor is it sufficient to have good intentions without putting them into practice. Both body and soul need to be working together.

In a similar way, the sacrifices of Lent are intended to strengthen the movement of our hearts away from the world, and toward Jesus Christ. Those who confess that Jesus is Lord, and believe in their heart that God raised him from the dead, do not, and cannot, “rage against the dying of the light.” The light of this world is only a passing reflection of the true light of Heaven, where there is

no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light shall the nations walk; and the kings of the earth shall bring their glory into it, and its gates shall never be shut by day–and there shall be no night there; they shall bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. (Revelation 21: 23-26)

That’s what God promises to us, on the far side of the temptations of the Devil and forty days in the desert. We can’t do it alone, but if we “Call on the name of the Lord” Jesus is there with us.

February 12, 2022 iacobusm Faith and Sin

Cons or Coeds? Sin, Suffering, and the Mystery of the Cross

Who would you expect to be more open to conversion, prison inmates, or students at a Catholic college? A few years back my sons used to attend a Catholic boys group that included sports, games, scripture reading, and catechesis, along with the occasional guest speaker. One such speaker was a young priest we knew who came to talk about his work as a chaplain. As it happened, he had been assigned to two different chaplaincies shortly after his ordination, one at the local (more or less) Catholic college, the other at a nearby prison. One of the boys asked him who was harder to work with, the cons or the coeds?

“It’s not even close,” was the priest’s reply, “the students are much harder to work with.”

*Maine Correctional Center Windham, Maine (Portland Press Herald photo)*

We might expect it to be the other way around; the young priest certainly thought so before he started working in the two different institutions. And yet it really shouldn’t surprise us. If you’re in prison, it’s hard to ignore the consequences of your actions. It’s true that many criminals can still convince themselves that it’s all somebody else’s fault, even after they’ve been convicted and locked up. But the prisoners who are still in denial, generally speaking, aren’t the ones seeking out the chaplain.

Students at a Catholic college, on the other hand, tend to be doing fairly well. Again, there are exceptions: all have experienced some difficulties in life, and some, of course, will have experienced serious suffering. For the most part, however, if you’re a student in good standing at a private college, you have reason to consider yourself fairly successful. The more successful we are, the more in control we feel . . . and the less need we feel for God.

**The Sacrifice of Elijah Before the Priests of Baal**, *by Domenico Fetti, 1621*

I remember grappling with this problem thirty years ago, when I returned to the Church after my years of exile among the secularists. It was exciting to understand the stories and lessons in the Bible with fresh eyes: I found myself understanding even long-familiar passages in a totally new way. One thing that perplexed me at first, however, was the behavior of the Hebrews in the Books of Kings and Chronicles, who were constantly chasing after other gods and “doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord.” They knew who God was, didn’t they? They had all the evidence they needed in the history of their people, and yet they kept rejecting God for . . . other things.

I soon came to understand that the Hebrews, as fallen human beings, were simply doing what fallen human beings do. I came to see it in my own life: I was brought back to the Faith by a profound experience of Jesus Christ. I knew firsthand that God was real. And yet, time and again, I found myself straying, drawn by the allure of . . . other things.

That’s why Jesus gave his Apostles the power to forgive sins (see Matthew 16:19 and 18:18, and John 20:23). We are all in continual need of repentance and forgiveness, both individually and collectively. The problem is, we don’t always know it. Like the ancient Hebrews before the Baylonian exile, we forget about God whenever things seem to be going well. We feel like we’re in control, and think we can do whatever we want. It often takes a setback to remind us that we’re really not in control at all. Sometimes it takes a severe setback. For the Hebrews of the First Millennium BC, it took eighty years of enslavement in a foreign land to put them straight.

Unfortunately, there is often a price to pay, and the stronger the reminder, the greater the price. The Hebrew tribes of Judah and Benjamin, who occupied the Kingdom of Judah and were carried into exile by the Babylonians, later returned to their land with their faith purified and strengthened by the harsh lessons of exile. The ten tribes of the Kingdom of Israel, however, who had been conquered over a century earlier by the Assyrians, were scattered and disappeared from history. Likewise, an alcoholic who at long last hits rock bottom and turns to God as his Higher Power will often, nonetheless, still suffer permanent physical, mental, and neurological damage. We risk paying a high price for our failings. It’s better to respond to gentler reminders before we hit rock bottom.

And reminders there will be. The inspired author of the letter to the Hebrews writes:

“For the Lord disciplines him whom he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? . . . he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. (Hebrews 12:6-7; 10)

Note the positive incentive: “that we may share his holiness.” The potential reward is great beyond our imagination; the price of failure, however, is something we don’t want to imagine. The stakes are high.

*Chuck Colson handing out Bibles to prisoners (prisonfellowship.org)*

The convicts in the state penitentiary know from hard experience that the stakes are high. One of the most well known of these is Chuck Colson. Colson was deeply involved in the illegal Watergate activities of President Richard Nixon’s administration. As his arrest seemed imminent in the spring of 1973, a friend gave him a copy of of C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. That was just the spark he needed to bring him back to Christ: instead of cursing his bad fortune, he saw his imminent incarceration as a deserved chastisement for his wrongdoing. He became a committed Evangelical Christian, and accepted responsibility for his criminal behavior, pleading guilty to obstruction of justice charges.

The Book of Proverbs assures us that “Whoever heeds discipline shows the way to life, but whoever ignores correction leads others astray.” (Proverbs 10:17) Colson discovered the truth of those words in prison, saying afterwards: “I found myself increasingly drawn to the idea that God had put me in prison for a purpose and that I should do something for those I had left behind.” After his release Colson founded an organization called Prison Fellowship, dedicated to helping the broken people in our correctional institutions find spiritual healing, and more. As the Prison Fellowship website puts it:

Through an amazing awakening to new hope and life purpose, those who once broke the law are transformed and mobilized to serve their neighbors, replacing the cycle of crime with a cycle of renewal.

That message is for all of us, not just convicted criminals. We’re all called to replace the cycle of sin in our lives with a cycle of renewal.

The bad news is that, however in control we feel, failure and suffering, of some sort, will come into our life. The good news is that those apparent misfortunes are what will turn us away from ourselves and toward God. That’s the Mystery of the Cross. St. Paul says, “But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” (Galatians 6:14) The Good News, in other words, is that Christ is calling all of us to share in his glory, whether we’re cons, or coeds.

February 4, 2022 iacobusm Uncategorized

What Do you say to a God who permits bone cancer in children? Ask Chiara Badano

Blessed Chiara Badano (*Davide Papalini / CC BY-NC 2.0*)

“I’d say, ‘Bone cancer in children? What’s that about?’” he began.

“’How dare you? How dare you create a world to which there is such misery that is not our fault . . .It’s not right, it’s utterly, utterly evil.

The quote above from actor and public atheist Stephen Fry appeared in my post earlier in the week on the Feast of the Presentation (“The Presentation: Sufering and Joy“). Fry had been asked what he would say if, by chance, he should find himself face-to-face with the God he had rejected. I responded that, to an atheist who believes that there is nothing else beyond this world, physical suffering is the worst thing that can happen, but faith in Christ offers us so much more. Faith can bring us joy, “sometimes in the face of intense suffering, sometimes even through [our] suffering” if we join our pain to the suffering the Christ. I had offered the example of a relative, one of my father’s sisters, whose radiant faith “allowed her to be a support to everyone else as she lay dying of cancer.”

One might observe that I didn’t address Fry’s point about the suffering of children in particular. My aunt, after all, had lived a full life, and died at a time of life where we expect that our end is near. My immediate answer to that objection would be to offer the example of child saints who joyfully accepted death and suffering for the sake of Christ. The twelve year old martyr St. Tarcisius, for instance, who gave his life to prevent the desecration of the Eucharist by a Roman mob, or his twentieth century Chinese counterpart Little Li, killed by communists for her Eucharistic devotion. The fourteen year old St. Dominic Savio, whose death was probably brought on by pleurisy, also comes to mind.

Fry mentions bone cancer specifically, of course, as an example of suffering that is especially intense and lingering. It’s a curious thing, but just this morning when I was researching a different topic, I came across an account of Chiara Badano, who was beatified by Pope Benedict twelve years ago and whose cause for canonization is ongoing. Eighteen year old Chiara died in 1990, having suffered for two years . . . from bone cancer.

Our atheist friends might call that random chance, but it happens that Chiara provides a real life answer to Stphen Fry’s hypothetical question. The key is the role of faith in her life. Chiara deepened her faith through involvement with the Focolare movement, which her family joined when she was nine years old. When she became ill a few years later, that faith transformed her suffering, and her suffering informed her faith. She echoed St.Paul’s assertion that “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body” (Colossians 1:24), saying: “there’s only one thing I can do now: to offer my suffering to Jesus because I want to share as much as possible in his sufferings on the cross.” As was the case for St. Paul, and for the aunt I mentioned above, her suffering wasn’t pointless at all, but was offered for the benefit of others. Focolare’s account of her life recounts what happened when friends went to visit her in the hospital:

“At first we thought we’d visit her to keep her spirits up,” one of the Gen boys said,
“but very soon we understood that, in fact, we were the ones who needed her. Her life was like a magnet drawing us to her.”

This is the transformative power of faithful suffering. If we let him, Christ can transform our suffering into a powerful force for the good of our fellow men and women.

Not only that, there are rewards for the sufferer as well. Our faith teaches us that when we join our sufferings to Christ’s, we never suffer alone. Before she died, Chiara described what happened during one especially painful medical procedure:

When the doctors began to carry out this small, but quite demanding, procedure, a lady with a very beautiful and luminous smile came in. She came up to me and took me by the hand, and her touch filled me with courage.
In the same way that she arrived, she disappeared, and I could no longer see her. But my heart was filled with an immense joy and all fear left me. In that moment I understood that if we’re always ready for everything, God sends us many signs of his love.

The Stephen Frys of the world will dismiss Blessed Chiara’s account as fantasy, but no evidence will convince those who choose not to be convinced. The evidence is on Chiara’s side. The evidence is not only in her words, but in the testimony of her friends and relatives whose lives she enriched. The evidence is in her abundant joy in the face of excruciating physical suffering.

In truth, even the most ardent materialist will admit that suffering, at least in some cases, may be worthwhile: the pain we experience to condition our bodies for an athletic endeavor, for instance. Most will even concede that taking on hardship for others can outweigh the suffering involved, as in the case of a parent who sacrifices for his or her children, or even a soldier who trades his own life for the protection of his fellow citizens. How much more worthwhile when the reward is eternal joy, not only for ourselves, but for those whose lives and spirits are uplifted by our sacrifice?

Bone Cancer is a terrible thing, and it’s hard for us to see the suffering it causes, especially in children. But the power of Christ is much more powerful than even the worst suffering this world has to offer. Just ask Blessed Chiara Badano.

O Father, fount of everything good, we give you thanks for the wonderful testimony of Blessed Chiara Badano. Filled with the Holy Spirit and guided by the radiant light of Jesus, she believed firmly in your infinite love, and wished to return it with all her strength, surrendering herself in complete trust to your paternal will. We humbly beseech you that you may also grant us the gift to live with you and for you, and ask you, if it be your will, for the grace… through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen

(from Blessed Chiara’s prayer card)

February 1, 2022 iacobusm Faith and Sin, The Liturgical Year

The Presentation: Suffering and Joy

Presentation Lorenzetti — Ambrogio Lorenzetti, **Presentation of Jesus in the Temple**, 1342

How would you like to be pierced by sword? That sounds like a pretty painful image, does it not? And yet, despite that, the Presentation, which is today’s feast day and the occasion of the exchange above, is included in the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary. How can that make sense?

Yes, the Presentation of the Lord shows us a paradox, or maybe a series of paradoxes, which can lead us deeper into the mystery of Christ. On the one hand, it is our last fleeting look back at the recently concluded Christmas Season, and we experience some of the joy and wonder of that season, particularly in the prophetic utterances of Simeon. Simeon proclaims the infant Jesus “a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to thy people Israel” (Luke 2:32). His final words, however, foretell that Christ will be “a sign that is spoken against,” and he warns the Blessed Mother that “a sword will pierce through your own soul also.” His words here redirect us toward the quickly approaching Season of Lent, and beyond to the sorrow and suffering of the Triduum. The last thing we see in Luke’s account of the Presentation is the prophetess Anna, who hints at the solution to the apparent contraries in Simeon’s prophecy: she “spoke of him to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38). In the end, the glory of Christmas and the sword of Good Friday come together on Easter Sunday: Redemption comes only from the light shining through the darkness of suffering, and we catch a glimpse of that Paradox of Pain in the Feast of Presentation.

Stephen Fry, left, as Jeeves and Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster (from thetimes.co.uk)

I once ran across an interview with English actor and comedian Stephen Fry (on the Feast of the Presentation, as it happens), that provides a good illustration of what happens when we take Jesus Christ out of the Paradox of Pain. You may know Fry from Jeeves and Wooster, the British television series from the early 90s. Fry puts in an outstanding performance as Jeeves, the unflappable valet whose clever stratagems always manage to extract his employer, Bertie Wooster, from the ridiculous difficulties he creates for himself.

It turns out that Fry, in addition to being an accomplished comic actor, is an “outspoken atheist” (ironic, given how often he played the part of deus ex machina as Jeeves). In light of his public witness for unbelief, his interviewer asked him what he would say if he found himself, contrary to his expectation, face to face with his Creator in the afterlife. Fry’s answer is instructive:

“I’d say, ‘Bone cancer in children? What’s that about?’” he began.

“’How dare you? How dare you create a world to which there is such misery that is not our fault . . .It’s not right, it’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?’ That’s what I would say.”

There are a lot of unspoken premises in that statement. The largest is the assumption that physical suffering is the worst thing that can happen to you. And it does make sense that if all reality is reducible to matter, and that this present world is all there is, then what else could possibly be worse than suffering? This stance, however, leads to some paradoxes of its own. Fry goes on to assert, for instance, that eradicating belief in God would render our lives “simpler, purer, cleaner, more worth living, in my opinion.” Doing away with belief in God, however, really only makes Fry’s problem worse: instead of leading to redemption, suffering is now simply random and pointless pain. Not only that, but it is something we all must experience, it’s inescapable. The only way to eliminate suffering for an unbelieving materialist like Steven Fry is not to eliminate God, but to do away with humanity.

Fry’s fellow atheist, the philosopher David Benatar, states Fry’s unspoken premise explicitly, and openly arrives at the logical conclusion. In fact, he makes it the title of his best-known book: Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence. No people, no suffering: that’s the best the atheist can hope for.

Faith in Jesus Christ offers us something infinitely better. Most of us probably know people whose faith brought them joy, sometimes in the face of intense suffering, sometimes even through their suffering, so that they could say along with St. Paul ” in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body” (Colossians 1:24). In my post “Death and Human Dignity” I discuss one such person, an aunt whose faith allowed her to be a support to everyone else as she lay dying of cancer.

**Crucifixion**, by Jacopo Tintoretto, 1568

There is an episode of Jeeves and Wooster in which Bertie Wooster gets himself into a hopelessly tangled and embarrassing situation. Just as it looks like there is no escape for him, Jeeves (played, of course, by Stephen Fry) comes on the scene disguised as a Scotland Yard detective, and announces that he is arresting Bertie for “possession of an illegal golf club.” He whisks him off the premises, and the two merrily depart, free of consequences and no wiser than they were before. Jesus isn’t Jeeves. It’s true that he wants to save us from final damnation, but he doesn’t shield us from the wisdom gained from experiencing the consequences of our own, or even other peoples’, actions. As St. Paul explains to the Christians in Rome:

. . . we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us. (Romans 5:3-5)

Yes, he allows us to suffer, but he accompanies us in our suffering, so that we may accompany him to the Throne of the Father where we will experience joy unlike any pleasure this world can offer.

Small wonder, then, that The Presentation is included in the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary, despite Simeon’s ominous (and alarming, no doubt, to Mary and Joseph) utterance. We are reminded that, through his Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection, Christ has sanctified suffering: it is no longer a random, meaningless evil, but instead a path to Heaven.

That is, indeed, Good News.