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Often we think of God as someone who helps us get everything we need. The great parent in the sky. The Responsorial Psalm is an example: “See, the eyes of the Lord are upon those who fear him, upon those who hope for his kindness, to deliver them from death.”
Sometimes this childlike attitude is good, sometimes not. James and John rush up to Jesus to say, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you” (Gospel). It a bit blunt, isn’t it, like children making demands. Jesus replies mildly, “What do you wish me to do for you?”
Their answer? “Grant that in your glory we may sit one at your right and the other at your left.”
Not a completely unreasonable request, I suppose, but rude. Moreover, the demand comes immediately after—and I mean it comes in the very next line—after he has predicted the passion:
“The Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests
and the scribes, and they
will condemn him to death
and hand him over to the Gentiles who will mock him,
spit upon him, scourge him, and put him to death,
but after three days he will rise” ( Mark 10:33-34).
Hearing this, the apostles did what you and I often do: change the subject. They want not suffering but glory. Jesus responds that they are ignorant. They too must drink the cup that he will drink, or in other words, must also undergo pain.
What kind of answer to prayer is that? So maybe we should not pray for what we need?
No, Jesus himself begged God to take the cup of suffering away, and he used the term, “Abba” (a familiar form of “father”) when he was asking (Mark 14:36). And in another place: “During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission (Hebrews 5:7).
He was heard?
So God heard these fiery prayers and then sat by idly while the passion and cruel death went right along?
Such observations put us directly in front of the Terrible Question. Why does the trustworthy, loving, parental God permit suffering and catastrophe even when he has understood in detail the prayers of those about to be afflicted?
The answer?
There is another kind of love. The worst things for us are not loss, death and suffering, even though they certainly seem to be. The worst is loss of life’s groundwork, which is the never-ending love of God. Agony may deliver a greater good than its opposite would.
For instance,
“If [my servant] gives his life as an offering for sin,
he shall see his descendants in a
long life,
and the will of the Lord shall be accomplished through him. Because of his affliction he shall see the light in fullness of days” ( First Reading, my italics).
Consider that suffering can stretch and widen the human soul, making it large enough to know God, to live for others, to let in that which is greater than death or life: love. Love stays even when life does not.
God’s love is like that of the parent of an adult offspring. He does not rush in to stop non-good things to his offspring, maybe just to show what the best really is.
Fr. John Foley, S. J.
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