“Saint Teresa of Avila left us a rich legacy of teachings on why followers of Christ must learn to embrace suffering with joyful hope“
Today is the third Sunday of Advent.
This is the day we celebrate Gaudete Sunday, a day of joy, not just joy but joyful hope. As a people of hope, we await the coming of our Savior, not in despair or dejection, but with a joyful heart full of hope.
Because we know that even though the end is not in sight, but with the Great I Am on our side, the end will surely be a wonderful, glorious sight.
So, we rejoice, we praise, and we give thanks to God even in the midst of adversities and suffering.
If we look through the scriptures, we see that God sustains his people in every famine, every economic downturn, every plague, and every disease the people went through because they cried out for his mercy and, put their trust in him.
And God answers his people’s prayers because our God is a faithful God when we put our trust in him.
It is easy to say that we trust God when everything’s according to our plan.
But it’s a whole lot different when things are not so good.
In times such as this, the more we must trust God means and allow him to do what he wants to do, and make him succeed on his own terms.
And in his way and in his time not on our terms or in our way or in our timing.
To trust God is to say I will let God do what he wants to do even if it means carrying my own cross, without bitterness, and without fear of the outcome.
For God reigns in me, and he knows what is best for my own salvation.
Our troubles are fleeting and temporary.
What we need to focus more on is how to achieve for us an eternal glory that far outweighs every ounce of pain and suffering.
We are then called to focus not on what is seen but on what is unseen for in it lies our fate for all eternity.
What is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal.
Sometimes when you’re following Jesus, he leads you right into the center of a storm. Remember in the New Testament.
There are two times when the disciples found themselves in a storm in a boat.
They thought they were going to die both times.
But if they had not been in those storms, they would never have discovered truths about Jesus.
There were things that the disciples saw about Jesus they would never have seen except by going through the storms.
Surely, our normal tendency when it comes to storms is to go around it when we see it coming up on the horizon and to find a way to avoid it altogether.
Yet, we often do not realize it – going through suffering is necessary for salvation.
As the Holy Scripture says — For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
On suffering, St. Thomas Becket reminds “x x x how our fathers worked out their salvation; remember the sufferings through which the Church has grown, and the storms the ship of Peter has weathered because it has Christ on board.
Remember how the crown was attained by those whose sufferings gave new radiance to their faith. The whole company of saints bears witness to the unfailing truth that without real effort no one wins the crown.”
Sometimes God wants to lead you straight into the middle of a storm all because the Lord has his way in the whirlwind and in the storm and so you follow him into the middle of it, full of trust and in complete surrender.
Oftentimes, we are called to make a leap of fate, yet full of confidence and faith that God will be at the receiving end waiting to catch us on the way down, absolutely confident of God’s saving power.
Saint Teresa of Avila left us a rich legacy of teachings on why followers of Christ must learn to embrace suffering with joyful hope.
For this Doctor of the Church, suffering can serve as an active form of prayer, if we allow it.
According to Teresa, “It shouldn’t be thought that he who suffers isn’t praying, for he is offering this to God. And often he is praying much more than the one who is breaking his head in solitude, thinking that if he has squeezed out some tears he is thereby praying.”
In the end, it is this very same cross that will lead us to eternal glory.
This advent season, let us, therefore, pray for perseverance and strength from Christ to embrace our sufferings and learn to carry our everyday crosses in the spirit of joyful hope.
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