10 December 2022
Saturday of the Second Week of Advent
The lives of Elijah and John the Baptist bear witness to the difficult truth that remaining faithful to God can sometimes be quite challenging, especially when it seems that all the world is against us or otherwise opposed to the life of faith that we are called to. It is in these moments of difficulty and struggle, however, that real growth comes and we have to remind ourselves that God is always, always with us and would never ask us to bear burdens that we were incapable of. He loves us with the gentle grace of a good Father who wants to see us grow to the greatest stature possible in strength, grace, and virtue.
An oft perpetuated fallacy of the modern age is that suffering is always an evil to be avoided. A simple counterexample is provided in recalling that Redemption of humanity was accomplished by the patient, loving acceptance of suffering by Christ in his Passion, Death, and Resurrection. This is not to say that we should only ever go seeking after perpetual pain and misery. Far from it. Rather, it is to remind us that those who suffer for and through their faithfulness to God are his special, beloved friends. This has been demonstrated countless times through the example of saints such as Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, Therese of Lisieux, Francis of Assisi and so many others over the centuries. This Advent, let us take time to prayerfully consider, as St. Ignatius did, the answers to the following questions and allow them to guide us through the rest of the season: “What have I done for Christ? What am I doing for Christ? What ought I do for Christ?”