22nd Sunday in Ordinary
Time, 2023 – “Christ Suffered for you leaving you an example”
Saint Paul
tells the Romans to “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice” and Jesus
says to his followers in today’s Gospel “Whoever wishes to come after me
must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”
I made a
prayer in early 2019 that if there was anything I could suffer for the victims
of Catholic clergy sexual abuse/assault etc., that I would willingly do
that. A month later I had my first
seizure from what I later learned was a brain tumor. And I knew as soon as the words came out of
the doctor’s mouth, that this tumor had been an answer to that prayer I made.
And so,
after receiving my diagnosis, I wrote up a blog post that night about how I had
been diagnosed with a brain tumor, and that I was offering that suffering up
for all the victims of Catholic Clergy Abuse, and that post went viral.
Since my
first surgery was not for another month, that gave me the opportunity to
communicate with about 170 victim survivors, and parents of victims, and
parents of victims who had taken their life because of the abuse done to their
children by Catholic clergy, and so I entered my first of 3 brain surgeries in
March of 2020 with 170 names of victim survivors and victims who had committed
suicide because of the abuse.
I told all
of them that I don’t expect my offering up of my suffering them to suddenly
help them return to the Catholic Church, but some of them reached out several
years after and let me know that was the case for them.
Why do I
mention all of this??? Because the Bible says, over and over again, and in our
readings from St. Paul and Jesus in our Gospel today a teaching that I don’t
hear coming from any other place besides the Catholic Church, and that is that
our suffering has the power to change people’s lives and OUR life.
In all of this, I will say that the number one person who was helped through this offering up of my suffering for the victims...was me...my 3 year battle forced me to slow down and question things about myself that I had never stopped to question, and I recognized that a lot of times I was spreading gossip, slandering people not present and on and on.
Mother
Angelica had this beautiful phrase “Never let a DROP of suffering go to
waste”
My heart
aches when I hear people say that they think their suffering is meaningless…that narrative is out there a lot in
our world, but it is not true…our suffering has an infinite weight to it…just
as Christ’s suffering won our salvation, so our suffering can, when offered up
for other people, have dramatic effects in their lives, and in ours.
What does
this look like practically?
It might look like “Lord, I offer this small inconvenience that I am experiencing at the grocery store up for other people”
or…lord I am
offering the suffering I am experiencing from strife in my family up for that
person causing the strife…
or lord, I
offer up the suffering of this cancer and chemo up for other people…
Try it with
big and small sufferings in your life…God always keeps His Word because He
loves us…see if offering up your sufferings for yourself and others does in
fact make you more peaceful and calm.
And we all
know people who need to hear these things about our suffering not being
meaningless but something that we can offer up for others, and we all know
people who suffer because they are listening to the Devil tell them they are
the worst sinner because they get distracted at prayer…invite those people to
come learn more about Catholicism.
Inviting a
person to come learn more about what the Catholic Church teaches also has the
benefit of being something that, for most of us, we are MASSIVELY FEARFUL of
doing…so offer that suffering up for that person who you are going to push
through your fear and invite.
Classes
start September 14th at 6:30pm at St. Martin’s campus hall
Let us all
heed St. Paul’s command today and offer ourselves up as a sacrifice in both big
and small ways…may we make that a constant habit in our lives moving forward!
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