The Holiness of Life? Found in the Holiness of God!

The Holiness in Life?  Found in the Holiness of God.

Reading about holiness and what is required in finding it; we need to live as each saint lived;  suffering beyond our wants and joy!  Of course accepting suffering as an attribute of gaining sanctity we must get beyond the absence of breakdowns that constantly behooves us.  How can we find the benefits of becoming holy without accepting some type of suffering?  The answer is no mortal will be better than the Master who left us with the perfect example; the Cross on Calvary.

St. Paul proved his holiness over and over through all the many anti-human experiences he was subject to.  His ministry was loaded with so many roadblocks that would have deterred many of us, yet he continued on the way to elevate Jesus Christ with every turn of trials.

Can one reach holiness without any suffering?  Isn’t going to Holy Mass or praying round the clock with rosaries enough?  A little antidote to doing in lieu of being will place the answer to these on a spectrum of intent.  Certainly when we find ourselves extending our efforts of prayer our sense is like saying watch me as I give myself to God through what I do.  

When I was ordained people would ask me; “What can you do?”  My response was not giving a laundry list of activities my holy orders allow me to perform, as my response was always it is what or who I am that matters. 

Pharisees and scribes were continually asking for a sign from Jesus.  “Then the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and testing Him asked that he would show them a sign from heaven.”  (MT 16: 1 - 4).  Let’s be sure of numerating how often we satisfy ourselves through repetition of prayers, attend Mass daily, or even do works of self-appropriation for the satisfaction of gaining applause from God.  As magnanimous as they are, that is not how we find holiness alone.  It becomes just who we are in the eyes of God that holiness becomes a reality in the hearts of man.  

Let me clarify the difference between monumental moments of prayer, attending Mass frequently, or adhering to time spent promoting ourselves as a soldier of Christ.  These are the attributes that prove we are God’s emissaries that will evangelize the unlearned regarding Christ and our redemption.  Never give these up.

But this article leans on what is necessary to find holiness within the psyche of humanity when suffering isn’t an entity we seek after.  In fact the suffering that attaches itself is usually rejected but is not eradicated from a period of short attacks, or with fatal diseases a finality of leaving this earth sooner than we might like.

Jesus knew his time was short and prepared his disciples for his impending death with the assurance he would rise from the dead and set an example we would follow.   But no where did he ever tell any of us that we should pray and the malady of pain and suffering would mysteriously disappear.  We must seek the beauty of suffering in a way that reflects the obvious effects that await us in the end.  

Watching and waiting for a loved one to close their eyes for the last time, the agony they feel surpasses any semblance of loss or fear, obvious to us.  They have reached the ultimate understanding that waiting for their soul on the other side of human existence is God; who has sent his angels to guide them home.  However, before this moment arrives there is a peace that none of us can compare with, unless we are also on the side of heaven’s gate to paradise. 

Suffering became the mantra for many saints who through their agony and acceptance from an inner strength that is called grace,  have found the answer to this mystery called death.  This period of sustaining pain, disillusionment, and an emptiness no one can describe becomes their very grasp of what cannot be called just another day and it will all be completed.  “When will this all end” becomes their cry of “Lord take me now.”  

As I write, or when this will be read,  a relative is about to lose his mother to cancer.  Once it was determined it was terminal, it became only days to remove her from the hospital into the palliative care of hospice to comfort her remaining days.  The suffering she has adopted by no choice of herself will become the clouds of fear giving way to the silent sounds of peace and the lIght of Almighty God as he awaits her last hold on human life.  This is the same suffering culmination that saints of the past awaited, and each of us will follow one day in the future.

Ralph B. Hathaway