re: On Suffering

I wrote to a priest about a challenging homily I heard in August, you can read that letter here. Below is the thoughtful response I received:

Dear Peter,

May God's peace be with you. Forgive my tardy reply. My workload is usually 70-80 hours/week, so finding time to read carefully an 8-page letter isn't easy. Now that it's a holiday and I have some extra time, let me endeavor to respond.

First, let's take care of the Latin Mass question. The Latin Mass is an objective good to be valued and treasured, which is why we mourn that we've lost it from our parish. The fruits our parish has experienced (and what I've personally experienced) convinces me of this truth. Yet, not everyone in the Church - especially in Church leadership - sees this. Sadly, the Church has Her own brand of politics, Her own battle between liberals and conservatives. Within this political climate, liberal ideologues see the Latin Mass as a relic from the past, an unhelpful and conservative form of worship that stands in too stark a contrast to the more liberal forms of worship they prefer. Ironically, it's the people who are constantly preaching the "big tent" mentality (i.e., that there is room in the Church for EVERYONE, including heretics who steadfastly oppose certain Church teachings) who are so quick to deny Traditional Catholics a place within the Church. Devotees of the Latin Mass are the "basket of deplorables" (to borrow from Hilary Clinton) in the Church today.

Aside from Church politics, we also have to understand that there's evil in the Church. Pope Paul VI famously stated that the smoke of satan has entered the Church. Part of this battle over the Latin Mass has roots in this evil, this smoke of satan. There are undoubtedly some very evil men who've risen to great heights in the Church's leadership over the centuries. Just think about Fr. Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, as an example. The guy lived a double-life, sexually exploited his seminarians and others, and lived a very luxurious life while managing to fool thousands, including Pope St. JPII. My point is that he's not an isolated case; there are plenty of men who hold positions of power in the Church who are not working for the good of the Church, but who have evil intentions. Interestingly, countless exorcists have spoken about the profound potency of the Latin Mass and the Rites of the Church before the 2nd Vatican Council in rooting out evil. So, I do believe that getting rid of the Latin Mass or limiting it as much as possible is part of satan's plan for the Church. And I have no doubt that the evil one has plenty of guys in Church leadership he can count on to do his bidding. He's been working this way in the Church since Judas.

NB: I am not accusing our bishop of being evil or consciously cooperating with evil. That's not my place and not something I can judge.

As for St. Rose, she is not an easy saint, to be sure. Her severe penances and writings can be both challenging and off-putting. It's hard for us to understand the good that could possibly come from her extreme measures. She - along with St. Catherine of Siena whom she emulated - seemed to go too far in their desires for suffering and inflicted incredible penances on themselves that likely led to premature deaths. Yet, this phenomenon is not necessarily rare in the lives of the saints. In many cases a prudent spiritual director checked such extreme penance in our saints. For example, saints like St. John of the Cross and St. Aloysius Gonzaga also showed this tendency toward extreme penances, but both of them were forbidden by spiritual directors to perform the most severe penances that they desired.

In my studies of the lives of the saints, I've come to understand that this desire for extreme penances comes from their love. Every saint is animated by love: love for God and other souls. They are truly people who love God above all else, with all their minds, hearts, souls, and strength, while also loving their neighbors as themselves. Sometimes, the love possessed by the saints is of such ardor that they become almost obsessed with demonstrating this love to our Lord. Their extreme penances become an outlet for their love - a means of showing our Lord just how much they are willing to suffer for Him and His Church, while at the same time giving them a means of uniting themselves to Christ's passion and death, which they offer up for the sake of other souls. Our current societal focus on self-care and wellness struggles mightily to understand such an outlook.

As you rightly deduced in your email, suffering does not automatically produce grace. Rather, suffering, lovingly and faithfully embraced in union with Christ's suffering, is an opportunity for grace. In Matthew 16:24 Jesus tells us that if we are to be His disciples, we must deny ourselves, pick up our crosses and follow Him. In this we find the willingness to suffer (denying self and picking up our crosses) is an essential part of Christian discipleship. Ultimately, I think this is what St. Rose is getting at with those quotes I shared in my homily: “Without the burden of afflictions it is impossible to reach the height of grace." "This is the only true stairway to paradise, and without the cross they can find no road to climb to Heaven." Being the weak and wounded sinners that we are, we need to be purified and strengthened through penance and by embracing whatever sufferings come into our lives.

Is suffering the only path to salvation? Of course not. Salvation is God's gift to us; we cannot earn it. But what saint became a Saint without suffering? While we can be saved without the necessity of suffering, I don't think we can become saints without suffering - and that, I believe, is what St. Rose is getting at. And for those who are saved without taking on voluntary penances and embracing crosses in this life, isn't it reasonable to expect they'll have to undergo purgatory? There has to be some way that the temporal punishment due for our sins is satisfied.

You rightly point out the difficulty of understanding this quote: “We cannot obtain grace unless we suffer afflictions. We must heap trouble upon trouble to attain a deep participation in the divine nature, the glory of the sons of God and perfect happiness of soul.” Here, I think we have to contextualize St. Rose's words rather than take them literally. I say this because she's a saint who wouldn't utter a word outside of what the Church teaches. Of course we can obtain grace outside of suffering. She's hyperbolizing in order to make a point about how important a willingness to suffer is for sanctity. But to be like Christ (i.e., "attain a deep participation in the divine nature"), we have to be willing to do whatever it takes. The saints who suffered the most in this life are arguably the greatest and holiest. Suffering for our sakes is the most important thing Christ ever did for us. And if we wish to be like Him, we must have a great willingness to suffer too. For St. Rose and so many other saints, embracing their daily crosses just wasn't enough to satiate their love for God and their fellow man, so they took on extra penances. We can argue if St. Rose went overboard with her personal penances, but we cannot argue about her love for God. Is she transactional, insisting on suffering as a means of getting something from God? I don't think so. I think suffering for St. Rose was a conduit to union with our Lord. And such a powerful conduit it was for her (a sentiment shared by many, many saints), she wants others to be as willing to take on penances and embrace their crosses so that they can experience the same thing as she.

So, what's the upshot? We cannot suffer our way into Heaven. But, as suffering in this life is inevitable, it's important for us to have the right outlook with it. If we thank God for our sufferings, embrace our crosses lovingly as a means of uniting ourselves to Christ's passion, then our sufferings can help us grow in holiness, our sufferings can sanctify us. Whenever suffering comes into our lives, we have to make a choice: either to harden our hearts or allow our hearts to soften. We can either choose simply to endure our crosses or to embrace them. St. Rose wants us to see our personal penances and crosses as a means of loving God, of being united to Him, and ultimately of being sanctified.

I hope this is all helpful, Peter.

Best,

FTR

Wanted to refrain from providing any commentary before hand so as not to prime the reader for your own reaction.

1. Latin Mass is objectively good - this is based
2. The Church can be an instrument of evil just as readily as it can be for good dependent entirely upon the spiritual fitness of its executors in the Church leadership - this is also based
3. Many saints went too far in their emulation of Christ's suffering, requiring spiritual directors to temper their extreme self-appointed penances, this comes from a place of love and willingness
4. St. Rose of Lima was speaking hyperbolically, she was dogmatic at heart and would not speak outside the confines of Church teaching
   • I should read more on the lives of the saints