Monday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time

St Francis De Sales Church
in Beckley, West Virginia

(The) persecutions and the afflictions you endure (are) evidence of the just judgment of God, so that you may be considered worthy of the Kingdom of God for which you are suffering.

Saint Paul was a master of turning lemons to lemonade. In fact he probably invented the technique as he contemplated the cross.

Beginning with the Resurrection of Jesus after that dreadful Friday, Saint Paul saw that every inconvenience and every pain and every disappointment could be reinterpreted as a blessing. As “things like scales fell from his eyes” he saw with amazing clarity. He would never again read events in the usual human ways; rather, he would see with the eyes of God in an entirely new and unexpected way. Two millennia later, as we have learned to see his way we might think, “Well, of course!” but it was not obvious then; and for most people today, still is not obvious.

Saint Paul taught the Thessalonians in this second letter that their suffering is “evidence” of God’s justice and mercy. Their enduring the trial; waiting for deliverance; learning neither to complain too much; nor to carry a heavy heart of disappointment and irritability; would prove them worthy of Jesus’ cross.

Eventually some Christians, perhaps these very Thessalonians, would be murdered for their faith; and the church would learn to honor them as martyrs. Recovering from the shock of seeing their co-religionists slain, they would see through their horror the beauty, glory and authority of Jesus Christ in their death.

Saint Paul still invites us today to see in our own afflictions “the evidence of the just judgment of God.” True, we are not persecuted for our faith. In many cases we are admired. But there is no end of troubles; every generation breeds its own kind.

As Americans live longer we are more afflicted with chronic illnesses. They’re the kind that are never cured. They just make us miserable until we welcome them as a participation in the suffering of Christ.

• If marriages end in divorce more often than they end in death, the suffering of divorce is no less a cross which might shine with the glory of Easter.
• If I have brought on my own suffering with my reckless lifestyle – COPD that comes of smoking; skin cancer, from sun bathing; diabetes, borne of overeating – the suffering is nonetheless real.
• There is nothing to be gained by regret, but the soul can welcome these chronic illnesses as a participation in the suffering of Christ.

That willingness to make lemonade of lemons is the Tau on the forehead of God’s elect, an Ash Wednesday sign of grace.