Endurance

 Suppose you knew that someone would suffer a great deal and the suffering would be stubbornly persistent. What would you say to that person? Would you try to console the person, or admonish them to bear the suffering patiently and with good will? Would you tell that person the suffering was going to go away, even if you knew it would not?

Suppose you knew that entire nations of people were going to suffer grievously, and for a long time because it was stubbornly persistent. Would you be silent about what you knew, or what would you do?

These questions are nothing new, and if people think someone spoke authentically about such things, they might swarm over them for relics, bits and pieces of clothing or things touched if perchance it might convey some spiritual blessing.

Speak the truth, live the truth you know. Tell it like it is, and if there is nothing else you can do, at least offer a prayer for suffering people to have patience and faith that God's love suffices.

Blessed are the people who endure patiently in docility with love, for they have done a mighty deed with God, to bring about salvation where it might not have been possible before.

On the other hand, there is nothing wrong in praying for the healing of sufferers and their souls so they might experience salvation. Blessed are those who allow themselves to be engulfed in distress for their sake, if only so that the Lord might see you care, where no one else has noticed or expressed concern.

For Jesus suffered the nth degree of impatience and the full depths of human suffering to the point He finally died giving Himself to the Father in love, for us.

This being the case, conserve your strength and energy for the sake of God's people and so you might be a conduit of grace to them of which you do not participate.

There is grace in suffering for someone else and foregoing consolations for their sake so they may be saved by savoring the fragrance of those graces, letting them slip through your hands instead of trying to clutch at them to keep some particle for yourself.

Our time is short, nor does God often ask a person to forego everything for very long; He is neither feeble nor faint and is not uncaring, but the shortest route through the pain is enduring what is troubling, and loving Jesus because you cannot bear to see Him suffering His cross without relief.

It is not the person who cannot enter into suffering that is troubled with it, but the one who knows full-well and does not mind and does not seek escape. He will be filled with love and consolation to the fullest, who suffered most fully.

The simplicity of suffering souls is most pleasing to the Lord who relishes it, and does not take without acknowledging the source.

In all things be at peace, and acknowledge the presence of the Lord whether you are aware of His physical presence or not. Neither seek suffering nor avoid it, but rest in His hands and receive what He is intent on giving you. Great graces may be obtained that way, for the relief of those who suffer most and who least deserved to suffer at all. 

He was born in a stable in a place with no other rest available. He was born to be crucified and rested on the cold stone of the sepulcher, having been prepared for His death by those faithful to Him. All this unfolded into space and time in the world so that things might unfold still further as they should today. The stable is in all time, and the cross stands starkly against the dark sky still, and will remain forever, so that salvation my be forever, and our enjoyment of His consolations might also be eternal, but our pains and participation in the cross for others knows its limit too. It is only eternity that is eternal and how should that be without a moment that it came? It came because YOU came to participate and be beside Him hanging on the cross's nails because of the intensity of your love which would not allow you to desert or abandon Him, and in the Garden some did abandon Him so that He must go when He did not want to go.

If you allow Him to bring suffering upon you even when you did not want it, you will not remain the same but will become like Him, and surely release will come for others for whom you endured? It is impossible that the cross should be without efficacy, ours or His.