How to rejoice in sufferings?

[Magnum_V8]

There is someone in my life that I believe has been given a gift from God…suffering. She’s going through severe emotional suffering, and is struggling severely in it. She is Catholic, but is very poorly catechized and still thinks everything in life should be easy. She absolutely seems to detest any obstacles. She says her entire life has been one big obstacle and she’s sick of dealing with it anymore.

She is married, to a Catholic, and her mother-in-law lives with her and her husband. They have one child. They’ve (she and the mother-in-law) had their share of arguments over the years while living in the same household. The mother-in-law has always been hard on her and not very easy to get along with. The mother-in-law says very nasty, NASTY, things to her in fits of anger; I believe the mother-in-law just tries to say the meanest thing possible, but doesn’t truly believe or feel that way. They’ve always been able to get past it, though, after a number of days of the “silent treatment.”

Well, this past weekend, they got into it again and I think it may have been the worst one. As usual, it was a petty issue that snowballed out of control. Mean things were said back and forth.

My friend is not coming out of this one, though. She is absolutely disgusted with the mother-in-law; they aren’t speaking. She was planning to go to confession on Saturday, but said that if the mother-in-law was going, then she wasn’t going. My friend and the mother-in-law don’t really have access or means to any other church.

I don’t know if I would feel comfortable having that attitude about the situation while planning to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Doesn’t it also include reconciling with your neighbor? What’s that whole thing about reconciling with your brother before presenting your offering at the altar? I mean, I don’t expect her to start chatting it up with the mother-in-law; but I think she should, at the very least, be reconciled in her heart. My friend is expressing her disgust, resentment and bitterness in regards to her mother-in-law.

In the end, I told her that suffering is a gift from God, and that she should embrace it with joy. I reminded her that many, many Saints suffered. I gave her a quote from St. Pio where he said something to the effect of “Jesus wouldn’t lead the chosen ones by any means other than the path that He Himself had taken…the path of suffering.”

But I feel hypocritical in this, because I acknowledge that at times I reject my sufferings and count them all misery, not joy. So, I beg the question, how do we rejoice in our sufferings? How can I do it more? And how can I help my friend to do it?

 

[Neophyte_Rose]

This question also bothers me.

As a child, I suffered more than most in our culture, and as a result I now find it hard to connect with my peers very well. I grew up very quickly in some ways and not at all in others, and it leaves me out of step… pretty much everywhere, with everyone.

Faith and religion, before becoming Catholic, always seemed to me to be a matter of passion. If I “felt” like a believer, then it meant I probably was… it’s these “feelings”, this intuitive sense of myself and this constant awareness of my passions … that lead me into the Catholic Faith to start with.

Now, my passions have fled the faith and are busy requesting my mind and will to assist them in perusing pretty much any other faith or religion. My heart practically screams out in anger and anguish when I am at Mass - as much as I chose to be there, when I am there I often have the impulse to run - to go back to who I was or forward to someone different, anything but staying put.

But my education and catechesis in my faith has taught me not to follow my passions, but my reason. I keep repeating the definition of faith to myself… according to (I think)pg 155 of the Catechism, faith is “an act of the intellect assenting to divine truth, by command of the will moved by God through grace”

It’s not an act of the passions, but of the intellect.

Hope and love, also, come down to the will and the intellect. I choose to will the good of a person, for his own sake, despite how much my passions would like to harm him.

Loving your enemies and being a doormat to your enemies, however, are two different things. To will the good of a person means to will their salvaton - to will their return to God. It doesn’t mean to help them in sinful or distasteful activities, or anything else.

I would suggest to your friend, that she pray for her MIL. I would also suggest, that while she do her best to be cheerful and show an attitude of rejoicing - to choose to rejoice, as it were - that nowhere does it say she has to trust her MIL again. Nowhere does it say that she has to lay down and take unjust treatment.

just my :twocents:

Pax Christi,
Esther Rose

 

[johnco]

hi,

this poor lady and her husband need,

a. agood spiritual director

b. a good marriage counselor

God bless,

johnco