Catholic preachers often overlook the New Testament epistle reading. As a result, we frequently miss out on a great treasure trove of inspired wisdom. During this particular Easter season, both in the lectionary for Sunday Mass and in the Office of Readings, which is one of the offices that comprise the Liturgy of the Hours- the Church’s official prayer- the Church, our mater et magistra (i.e., mother and teacher), provides us with a lot of readings from the First Peter. Given this sacred book’s focus on suffering, this seems most fitting during this pandemic.
It is because the Church is in Year A of the three-year cycle of Sunday readings that we read from 1 Peter from this Sunday through the Seventh Sunday of Easter. While some readings feature it more explicitly than others, five out of the six readings broach the subject of suffering.
As the Buddha pithily observed: to live is to suffer. As Christ painstakingly showed: to love is to suffer. But then, to love is what it means to truly be alive. Theologian Herbert McCabe observed a long time ago: “if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you.”1 While it is abundantly clear that suffering, in its various forms, is an inherent part of human life, it’s important to note that God is not the cause of our suffering. On the contrary, humanity was the cause of the passion of the Christ.
In and through Christ’s passion and death, God- who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit- redeemed suffering. In his very person, both in his suffering and his descent into hell, Christ retrieved human suffering from the void, from meaninglessness. Because Jesus himself, the Scripture teaches, “was tested through what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.”2
In and through Christ, the alchemy of grace can turn the lead of suffering into the gold of glory.3 Being a Christian means being a person who steadfastly refuses to let suffering have the last word. It is our belief in Christ’s resurrection that makes us incorrigible about this. This is what our epistle reading tells us: that we rejoice in the “resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” which is the source of our “living hope.”4
While it certainly can, it is important that suffering doesn't diminish your living hope. Rather, suffering, when accepted- instead of denied or refused (both of which are futile responses)- and united with Christ’s suffering, can be, but is not necessarily, the fire through which your faith is strengthened.
Living this way, which cannot and does not attenuate the seriousness of suffering or dull its pain, will result in “praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” When you think about it, not letting your suffering diminish your living hope is the very revelation of Jesus Christ, just as the crucifixion is the deepest revelation of God’s very self.
Beyond, enduring suffering in his Second Letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul insisted that because of our living hope in the resurrection of Christ, in imitatio Christi, we can put our sufferings at the service of God’s redemptive purposes. Paul wrote:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and God of all encouragement, who encourages us in our every affliction, so that we may be able to encourage those who are in any affliction with the encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged by God5Today's Gospel has two distinct parts. In the first part, we hear what we as Catholics usually describe as Christ’s institution of the Sacrament of Penance (i.e., confession). In part two, we hear about Thomas overcoming his doubt by seeing and believing. So, we might say that within one and the same Gospel reading the Church puts before us faith and doubt.
What ties faith and doubt together inextricably is the reality of suffering. Nothing produces doubt about God’s goodness, God’s power, or even God’s very existence more than suffering. Here’s a bit of good news: rather than denying suffering, or seeing it as God’s punishment for wayward humanity or an individual person who has misbehaved, or as the way God goes about accomplishing his purposes, the doubt caused by suffering is important, vital, perhaps even necessary for faith.
According to our epistle reading, doubt caused by suffering is what makes your faith “more precious” and more enduring “than gold that is… tested by fire.”6 Doubt is not the opposite of faith. Certainty is the opposite of faith. In the context of suffering, it is people who can always produce a reason for suffering, usually by the use of pious platitudes, that grate on us the most. As Rich Mullins sang: “I know it would not hurt any less/Even if it could be explained.”7 Suffering is a mystery because there is no explanation that eases our pain.
It is very important to point out something our Gospel for Divine Mercy Sunday makes very clear: the Risen Lord still bears the wounds of his crucifixion. This is perhaps the best explanation of suffering available to us. It is God telling us he has suffered with us and continues to suffer with us. It is this, perhaps more than anything, that enables us to believe without seeing.
On this Divine Mercy Sunday, let’s worship the God who is Mercy and dismiss the omnipotent moral monster of so many imaginations. Taking a cue from the closing prayer for the Chaplet of Divine Mercy: in difficult moments, like one we are presently experiencing, may we not despair nor become despondent, but with great confidence submit ourselves to God’s holy will, which is Love and Mercy itself.
1 From Terry Eagleton, “Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching,” London Review of Books, Vol. 28 No. 20, 19 October 2006.↩
2 Hebrews 2:18.↩
3 Ken Boa, from the podcast “In the Studio with Michael Card.”↩
4 1 Peter 1:3.↩
5 2 Corithians 1:3-4.↩
6 1 Peter 1:7.↩
7 Rich Mullins lyrics to “Hard to Get.”↩
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