First Call

Finding in our innocent sufferings the joy of Jesus

10/01/2018

Job 1:6-22 And so one day, while his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in the house of their eldest brother, a messenger came to Job and said, "The oxen were ploughing and the asses grazing beside them, and the Sabeans carried them off in a raid. They put the herdsmen to the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you." While he was yet speaking, another came and said, "Lightning has fallen from heaven and struck the sheep and their shepherds and consumed them; and I alone have escaped to tell you." Then Job began to tear his cloak and cut off his hair. He cast himself prostrate upon the ground, and said, "Naked I came forth from my mother's womb, and naked shall I go back again. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD!" In all this Job did not sin, nor did he say anything disrespectful of God.

Today we celebrate the feast day of a tremendous little saint named St. Therese of Lisieux. She was both tremendous and little because of all she accomplished in only 24 years of life. She shares the mantle of “co-patron of the missions” with St. Francis Xavier even though she never stepped foot outside her Carmelite cloister. She was declared a “doctor of the Church,” a designation bestowed on only three other female saints (Teresa of Avila, Hildegard of Bingen, and Catherine of Siena). Pope Benedict XV was so impressed by her heroic life he dispensed with the customary fifty-year waiting period between death and beatification. He argued the world needs this saint sooner. Why? Well, let me tell you.

What touches me most about St. Therese of Lisieux is her innocent suffering. In 1896 she coughed up blood into her handkerchief and discovered the first signs of tuberculosis. That occurred on Good Friday that year, and St. Therese exclaimed with joy: “Ah! My soul was filled with a great consolation, I was interiorly persuaded that Jesus, on the anniversary of his own death, wanted to have me hear his first call!” By “first call” she meant the first indication that Jesus was calling her home to heaven, that this suffering would lead to death. But I believe her suffering was intensified by her innocence. Why should a little girl – 24 years old is a little girl to me – have to suffer so much when all she had done in life was be a cloistered nun for nine years? What serious sins had Therese committed that deserved so much suffering? St. Therese had learned the mystery of the love of Jesus: the innocent suffer for the sake of the guilty. That possibility may seem unfair and unjust to most of us, but to the saints it presents an opportunity to be more like the Lord, and therefore such suffering is not unjust but a joy.

Today the Scriptures offer us the story of Job for our meditations, and he, too, cuts the figure of the innocent suffering. Clearly, Job is free of the guilt of personal sin. We read: “In all this Job did not sin, nor did he say anything disrespectful of God.” Job’s friends, you will recall, come to convince him that his sufferings must be for his own sins or because God is cruel and unjust and only wants to see him suffer. But Job does not budge; rather he insists on his innocence and accepts his sufferings heroically, stating: “Naked I came forth from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall go back again. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Put simply: I am innocent and God is good.

Job cannot see it yet, but he is a prefigurement of Jesus: the innocent who suffers. But Job – like the whole Old Testament – unveils only half of the picture: that the innocent suffer. Only in the life and love of Jesus will we get the second half of the picture, that is, why the innocent suffer, namely, for the sake of the guilty. Job did not know what Therese did know: when the innocent suffer they imitate the love of Jesus, the innocent One, who suffered and died for us, sinners.

Modern Americans and even many modern Catholics, are acutely aware of the demands of justice: the guilty should be punished to the full extent of the law. We have learned our Old Testament lessons well. But we are only dimly discovering the spiritual truth of how the innocent suffer for the sake of the guilty. That is, we have to read the New Testament more rigorously.

Perhaps, and I say this without prejudice to what may transpire later this week, but perhaps Judge Brett Kavanaugh is innocently suffering for the guilt of whoever sexually assaulted Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. It is possible he may not be vindicated on this side of heaven, but he will be on another judgment day. In the meantime, maybe he will innocently suffer for the sake of the guilty, and be more like Jesus. Parents often find themselves suffering for the sins of their wayward children. Even though they raised their children to be Catholic and sent them to Catholic schools, many stop practicing their faith or worse fall into sin and vice. Parents are innocent – at least in this one respect – and suffer for the guilt of their children, and are a little more like Jesus. Spouses who stay married in spite of the sins of their partner – infidelity, alcoholism, verbal abuse, abandonment, etc. – are innocent but suffer greatly for the sins of their spouse. And they are like Jesus.

Are not all these innocent sufferings kind of like Jesus’ loving “first call” to participate in his Good Friday, just like Therese did when she saw the blood of tuberculosis, and when Job saw the lesions of leprosy? Jesus invites us to suffer with him and eventually die with him so that we might love like him. The logic of the New Testament is not intended to answer the demands of justice – an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth – but rather to illuminate the lengths of our Lord’s love. It answers the age-old question that haunts modern man, too: why do the innocent suffer? They suffer for the sake of the guilty, so they might experience the joy of Jesus. St. Therese of Lisieux understood that lesson perfectly and lived it fully in just 24 years. That is why she is such a tremendous little saint.

Praised be Jesus Christ!