When the Lord lets us taste his Cross through pain and illness, we must consider ourselves as beloved children. He may send us physical pain or other sufferings: humiliations, failures, insults, contradictions within our own family... We must not forget, then, that Christ's redemptive work continues through us. However insignificant we may be, we become co-redeemers with Him, and pain that was useless and harmful becomes joy and a treasure. And we can say with St. Paul: Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. The Apostle remembers the Master's lesson: for this reason he follows in his footsteps, takes up his cross, and continues the work of making Christ's doctrine known to all men.
Pope John Paul II affirms that pain "is not only useful to others, but even performs an irreplaceable service. In the Body of Christ (...) suffering, penetrated by the spirit of Christ's sacrifice, is the irreplaceable mediator and author of the goods indispensable for the salvation of the world. Suffering, more than anything else, opens the way to the grace that transforms souls. Suffering, more than anything else, makes present in human history the power of Redemption."
To take advantage of this wealth of graces that, in one way or another, will come to us, we need "remote preparation, done every day with a holy detachment from ourselves, so that we may be ready to bear with grace—if the Lord allows it—illness or misfortune. Make use of normal occasions, of some deprivation, of pain in its usual small manifestations, of mortification, and put Christian virtues into practice."
Pain, which has separated many from God because they have not seen it in the light of faith, must unite us more closely to Him. And we must teach the sick its redemptive value. Then they will bear with peace the illness and contradictions that the Lord allows, and they will love them, because they will have learned that pain also comes from a Father who wants only good for his children.
We turn to our Mother, Holy Mary. She, “who on Calvary, standing courageously beside the cross of her Son (cf. Jn 19:25), shared in his passion, knows how to convince ever new souls to unite their own sufferings to the sacrifice of Christ, in an ‘offertory’ that, transcending time and space, embraces all humanity and saves it.” Let us ask her that the pain and sorrows that are inevitable in this life may help us to unite ourselves more closely to her Son, and that we may understand them, when they come, as a blessing for ourselves and for the whole Church.
HCD