… I feel something more is needed––we largely found our evidence for sainthood on that saint’s intercession in the physical healing of someone here on earth. We promote patron saints… etc… It is clear that the object of all these prayers are goods. Dear Marco,
It may be easier for me to reply one at a time to several things you have said by injecting my words in a different color. The “something more” needed, it seems to me, is God’s Grace working in a particular person and that person’s willingness to receive and cooperate with God’s Grace. If a person refuses grace given with every trial encountered, then there can be no growth in faith, hope and charity. The first step in the process of canonization for saints is to examine their lives to see if they practiced the virtues of faith, hope and charity to a heroic degree. Miracles are God’s affirmation a person is truly in heaven having achieved the perfection of charity. We promote the intercession of saints to help us in our journey toward union with God. True “goods” are those which help us fulfill our call to holiness and union with God for all eternity.
Things like a marriage, which is a sacrament, or a conversion, are also things that extend both in this world and in the next… So what do we tell those who pray for these things, while the person next to them does the same, and one is “answered” and the other is not? It seems problematic to tell such a person that God feels He must purify that person more than another person by giving him/her more trials and less “response.” Actually there is no marriage in heaven, as Jesus tells us in Mattjew 22:30 - "For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. God knows what each one truly needs, and what is truly good for us on earth. Each soul is unique and unrepeatable. Only God can know us in the very depths of our souls. We do not know if God is “purifying” someone but we do know God works good in all things (Rom 8:28). I used the word “purification” as a possibility since Jesus promised “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God”. We “see” by faith here, but faith becomes Beatific Vision when we “see” God in eternity. We really cannot compare God’s work in different people’s lives. We are all different, yet His Love remains constant and invites all to share His Holiness, and eternal happiness.
… God does not instill desires into a person’s heart He does not intend to fulfill…God “satisfies the desire of every living thing.” … sometimes we may not ask for what is “good” for us. But when we ask for an objective good, especially something like a conversion which God explicitly tells us is His will (1 Tim. 2:4), how can this apparently not be granted? I encourage persons praying for conversions to remember St. Monica’s perseverance prayeding for her son many years. God worked in St. Augustine’s heart, even when St. Monica could not “see” any change. Her faith enabled her not to judge by appearances but trust in God’s faithfulness to His Word. She was rewarded in seeing her son baptized and his saintly “new life” of faith, hope and charity. If she had not seen his conversion before she died, I believe she’d have kept praying and ultimately received the same reward for her prayer. If we do not “see” a conversion, we can still trust in the person’s last moments he may turn to God as the Good Thief did.
…the analogy of the body of Christ contains part of the answer… as to why one person incurs a different experience than another, just as different parts of the body have different functions. However, that does not fully reveal why two persons would have the same desire, yet only one’s is granted, while the other apparently has a desire contrary to his function––which is obviously not an effective thing to say to such a person that their desire for a certain vocation, or health, or someone’s conversion is a delusion.Yes, the Body of Christ has many members and each one has a unique gift from God to be used for His Glory and the good of all. Today’s Gospel and last Sunday’s Gospel both encourage us to use what God has given us: His Grace! He sends it like rain on the just and the unjust to save all. We need to pray fervently for grace to discern true self-knowledge. We need to acknowledge that our own desires can be unlike God’s desires. We may desire things selfishly when God invites us to be sacrificially in love as Jesus loved us.
I feel we have a long way to go in confronting this matter … If not for Christ first accepting the cross and in total injustice accepting torture and death, we wouldn’t even have a path to follow even mysteriously. That, and/or we have to face the difficult reality that such stories like Job, who suffers and is restored, are only analogies for the afterlife, and that some people who suffer in this world have no hope to escape that suffering until death. Yet, this still does not confront why some are assigned that lot and not others.Perhaps the ultimate confrontation is whether a person is willing to surrender his own will and accept God’s Will. Jesus in His Agony cried out for the Father to take away the cup of His suffering but then said “Nevertheless not my will but Thy will. In the end we choose loving God or ourselves more.”
