Hope and Suffering
- By Fr. Peter
- 26 February, 2013
- 1 Comment
We struggle to understand the theological virtue of hope. Why is this? Is it perhaps because we do not know how to be still in the midst of sufferings? For “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope [Romans 5: 3-4].” Are we not more inclined to anesthetize away our sufferings, even minor ones, by buying things and entertaining ourselves?
Copyright © 2013
I find the presentation of this idea interesting because I imagine that, for many, it is suffering and how to alleviate it which is the focal point. But you have hope as the goal, and suffering as a ‘way’ to hope, like Paul. I doubt that the struggle you point to is really even a struggle for many at all – the very question is not, “Why do I not hope?” but “Why has my ‘hope’ not vanquished my suffering?”
If our approach is the former (to get of suffering), then I wonder if our ‘seeking God’ is really a search for God to anesthetize away our sufferings, which seems to me to be in potential opposition with taking up one’s cross. God, then, is not an end unto Himself, and it is not really Him that we seek in a true, ultimate sense, which amounts, I would think, to a practical failure to live by the First Commandment. (Just to be clear: I don’t we should make a cult out of suffering either, but neither should we make a cult out of ‘happiness’).
Our lives are about ourselves, and God is there to sort of help us along – that is how I understand the thrust of much of the common Christian (and even Catholic) spiritual writing today. But are they? And, if they are, then what meaning does adoration have?
Changes in the liturgy over time have not assisted us with this, I don’t believe. Priests turning ‘away from God’ and ‘towards the people’ is symbolic of our true problem, but it has been practically devastating to the orientation of our inner lives, and so all else.