The sound you hear now is the heart rate monitor going at 185 beats per minute.” Still she made light of events even joking that she should have taken more of her inhaler. “Young lady, your normal heart rate should be around eighty beats per minute. She was really trying to impress her accompanying friends as I attempted to make her realize how serious a tachycardia could be. This time, her tachycardia had been caused by taking an excess of asthma inhaler “for fun” as she put it. Her swing continued until the ball struck her on the head. After a hefty swing the ball had failed to release because her fingers were stuck in the holes. She had chosen a ball with finger holes that were too small. Once while doing a stint in the emergency room, I reviewed a teenage girl who was admitted with tachycardia (a raised heart rate.) I recognized her from a previous visit two weeks earlier when she had presented to the emergency room having dropped a ten-pin bowling ball on her head.
I share an anecdote, partly humorous perhaps, to begin our reflection on the meaning of death. Holy Spirit, help us to pick up our cross, to personalize it, and make it our own. What is a cross for one may not be so for another. It reminds us of the need to personalize our own cross because it comes in many shapes and sizes. Andrew's cross” can be seen on the flag of Scotland. His brother, Andrew, is attested by tradition to have been crucified diagonally. What is the Lord asking me, not others? Like Peter, we can become distracted and too busy looking at others instead of answering his call to us. Perhaps it can be a sign of the challenge to personalize our own calling. Peter turns and sees the disciple Jesus loved and asks Jesus “What about him?” Jesus tells Peter, “Never you mind about him. It is very interesting what happens next. Later, after the death and resurrection of Christ, the risen Lord again invites Peter to “Follow me” (John 21:19). When Jesus first passes by the Sea of Galilee, he invites Peter, and his brother Andrew, “Come, follow me” (see Matt 4:18–19). The apostle Peter had to personalize his call to pick up the cross and follow Christ. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in his suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will to have accept his suffering as his task his single and unique task. In Man's Search for Meaning, a book based on his experience of imprisonment at Auschwitz and various subsidiary camps of Dachau, he writes, Viktor Frankl, an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, spent three years in various concentration camps during World War II. What can make suffering more acute is when it is perceived that there is no meaning to it. Third, much courage, generosity, forgiveness, hope, and sacrifice arise from the world's sufferings and evils.įinally, Christ's Paschal Mystery shows how God draws out of the depths of evil the victory of the Risen Christ and his transforming love.
Second, moral evil and much of human suffering come from man's abuse of his freedom in sin. The answers, given by the same Catechism, are both comforting and enlightening:įirst, much evil in the world, especially physical evil, results from the kind of limited universe in which we live. The Catechism for Filipino Catholics poses a much-asked question “If God is ‘Father’ and ‘Almighty,’ why does He allow so much evil and suffering?” ( Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines 1997, n.
Because i am jesus christ and i will die for all your sins free#
In number fifteen it states:Īnd even though the victory over sin and death achieved by Christ in his Cross and Resurrection does not abolish temporal suffering from human life, nor free from suffering the whole historical dimension of human existence, it nevertheless throws a new light upon this dimension and upon every suffering: the light of salvation.
Pope Saint John Paul II wrote an apostolic letter called Salvifici doloris on the Christian meaning of human suffering.
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