I don’t know about you, but I find it difficult most of the time to count my various trials as joy. This is in no way calls God word into question. Rather, it’s an opportunity to let God’s word interrogate me.
Unless you’re very young and/or inexperienced, it’s difficult to argue with James’ assertion that testing produces perseverance. Perseverance, of course, is the fruit of the fifth Sorrowful Mystery of the Holy Rosary. What is the mystery of which perseverance is the fruit? The Lord’s crucifixion.
Christian discipleship was well-described in the title of a book by the late Eugene Peterson: A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.1 In this book, Peterson wrote about the necessity of patience, perseverance, and community for those who would take up their cross and follow Christ.
Following Jesus is not and never has either been a quick fix or a magical solution to life’s difficulties. As many experience it, becoming a Christian, or taking one’s Christian commitment with due seriousness, creates more difficulties. As Father Daniel Berrigan, one of the most prophetic voices of the last century, wrote:
We need to live our lives in accord with the deepest truths we know, even if it does not produce immediate results in the world2It bears repeating often that being a Christian requires living a life rooted in spiritual discipline. It is a life of prayer featuring a deep engagement with scripture. It is a life of self-giving service, worship, and witness. A sacrificial life.
Our first reading consists of the first eleven verses of the Letter of Saint James, one of the Bible's most challenging books. As for a life rooted prayer, what James is not saying is something like, “Ask God for anything and if you ask without doubting, He will deliver the goods.”
Rather, he is saying turn to God for wisdom. Turn to God for direction on how you ought to live as a disciple of Jesus Christ. True wisdom, divine wisdom isn’t worldly wisdom, as the exhortation to count your trials as joy indicates.
As the quote often misattributed to Flannery O’Connor describes it: “You shall know the truth and the truth will make you odd.”3 Counting one’s trials as joy is certainly odd and at odds with the more or less pagan notion that if life isn’t going my way God must be upset with me. This childish way of relating to God or understanding how God relates to you is spiritually crippling. It lacks wisdom.
Jesus makes much the same point James does when it comes not only to prayer but to righteous living. As the Law clearly warns: “You shall not put the LORD, your God, to the test.”4 Yet, this is what these Pharisees challenged Him to do.
Since we're just a few days away from the start of Lent, it seems fitting to point out that this is one of the temptation Jesus undergoes during His forty days and night in the wilderness.5 Certainly in the Synoptics and especially in Mark, the Lord’s attitude to His own miracles is ambivalent at best.
I am not telling you, “Don’t expect anything from God.” Every good Christian spiritual writer warns against seeking miracles and consolations. Inherent in this warning is the belief that God can and does perform miracles and that He gives us consolations. But He does it according to His own will and wisdom, which is not, at least not yet, our will because we lack wisdom.
Wisdom is only gained through experience. What Christ wants you to experience, far from making your troubles and worries magically disappear, is how He walks with you on the journey of life. How He accompanies you, comforts you, loves you, helps you through your various trials.
This means seeing your trials and tribulations as opportunities to experience the Lord firsthand. A preacher can only tell you that Christ walks with you on your journey through life." Just how He does so is something that can only be experienced for yourself.
When it comes to accompanying you, the Lord doesn't lead you over, above, beneath, or around but through your trials, through the valley of the shadow of death.6 He is worthy of your trust. This assertion is testable.
1 Eugene Peterson. A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. IVP: 2000 (20th Anniversary Edition).↩
2 Daniel Berrigan: Essential Writings, Ed. John Dear. Orbis: 2009, pg. 31.↩
2 Mike Shapiro. “A source for the quotation ‘You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.’” Seaspawn and seawrack blog 31 January 2021, updated 3 February 2021.↩
4 Deuteronomy 6:16.↩
5 See Matthew 4:1-11- our Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent.↩
6 Psalm 23:4.↩
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