SUFFERING TO GOD'S CHILDREN

                       by Fr. William G. Most

The Book of Job is concerned with the problem of suffering. Only part
of the truth had been revealed at that time. Before, people had
tended to think suffering was a punishment for sin. It sometimes is
that, but not always. Yet that belief persisted even into the time of
Christ. Cf. the question: "who has sinned" This man or his parents?
(Jn 9. 2-3).

Job will make a degree of progress, namely, that it comes out clearly
that not always is suffering a punishment for sin. Yet the positive
value of suffering remained to be made clear by Jesus.

There is however a problem: We know we are adopted children of God.
Children, precisely because they are children, have a claim to be in
their Father's house, which is heaven.

The Council of Trent (DS 1532 and 1582) taught three things: 1) that
we receive justification with no merit at all. Justification means
the first reception of sanctifying grace, which in turn means that
the indwelling of the Holy Trinity in our souls makes us sharers in
the divine nature (2. Peter 1. 4) and adopted children of God. 2) So
we have a *claim* to go to our Father's house. A claim can be called
a merit. Yet it is a different kind of merit. Although it is as it
were a ticket to heaven, it is a ticket we get for free, without at
all earning it. 3) Once we have this status of children, sharing in
the very nature of the Father, any good we do has a special added
dignity, which makes it suitable that He increase our ability to know
Him face to face. Since that vision is infinite, but we are finite
receptacles, our capability to receive could grow indefinitely, for
it will never reach the infinite. That growth is what we call growth
in sanctifying grace. And even though the first grace-the basic
ticket itself - is not at all earned, there is a sense in which
additions to the ability to see face to face can be earned. Yet we do
not earn these as individuals. It is only inasmuch as we are
a)members of Christ and b) like Him, that we get in on the claim
which HE established.

In this sense we could say what one student once said in a class
about salvation: "You can't earn it, but you can blow it". That is,
children do not have to earn the love and care of their parents. Yet
they could earn to lose it.

So now we have focused our problem. We can rightly say: All we have
to do it to keep from earning to lose this ticket.

How then does this fit in with this such texts as:

Romans 8. 17: "We are heirs of God, fellow heirs with Christ,
PROVIDED THAT we suffer with Him, so we may also be glorified with
Him"? Similarly Jesus Himself said that He is the vine, and we the
branches (John 15. 1-6). The Father will prune a fruitful branch, to
make it bear still more fruit. Again, the Epistle to the Hebrews (12.
5-13) quotes the Old Testament (Proverbs 3. 11-12) saying that the
Father disciplines us as children. That is a sign He cares for us,
loves us.

The solution is really easy: If we remained always perfectly innocent
children, there would be no need at all for purification. But the
problem is that we all do sin (1 John 1.  8).

Therefore: a) The Holiness of our Father wants His children clean
enough to enter His house. Some sin so gravely as to even lose divine
sonship. Others do not lose it, but become dirty children, who need a
cleanup.

We could explain it this way: The scales of the objective order need
to be rebalanced if we, His children, have put it even somewhat out
of order by our personal sins. The sinner takes from one pan of a two
pan scales something he has no right to have. It might he so grave as
to cause him to lose divine sonship--mortal sin. But it can be
something lesser, which while it does not cause us to lose that
sonship, yet it does mean we are bad, we might say, dirty children.
We need to be cleaned up. The essential, the infinite work of
rebalancing the scales is done by Jesus, our Brother, with whom He
are heirs as Romans 8. 17 says. Yet the same line, Romans 8. 17 also
says we are heirs "provided that we suffer with Him."

As we indicated, by mortal sin we could even lose our status as sons
of the Father and brothers and sisters of Jesus. Yet even lesser,
venial sins, make us not clean enough to get in without some clean up
or polishing. So that needs to be done. In other words, each one of
us has an obligation to rebalance, by suffering, for the imbalance
even smaller sins have caused.

b) Just as a really good Father trains His children by discipline to
make them grow up and be what they should be, so our Father in
heaven, disciplines us for the same purpose, as we said above, citing
Hebrews and Proverbs.

c) If we really love our Father, we will want to see that He gets the
pleasure of giving to all those whom He wants to be His children. But
some of them have even forfeited that position, while others are
somewhat soiled. In either case, in order that He may be able to give
His favors to them, they need to be open. But many of them do little
or nothing towards rebalancing the scales for their own sins. So that
they may be put in the condition to receive, we can by taking on
difficult things, make up for them. This is love for them - it is
also love of the Father, for it gives Him the opening to give to
them, while at the same time it gives them the openness they need to
receive. (So we see in passing: love of God and love of neighbor are
found in one and the same action). Hence St. Paul said, in Colossians
1. 24: "I fill up the things that are lacking to the sufferings of
Christ in my flesh, for His body, which is the Church." Of course,
nothing is lacking to the sufferings of Christ considered as an
individual. But the whole Christ, Head and members, can be deficient.
Paul wants to do what we just said, to make up for the a lack of
opening in other members of Christ.

We gather, there is triple reason for suffering. It cleans up the
tarnished image of the Father and of Christ in us; it helps us grow
to spiritual maturity; it helps give the Father the pleasure of being
able to give to other, deficient children.

What was known of this beautiful picture at the tome of Job? As we
said, many, such as Job's so-called friends, insisted that all
suffering comes from sin. The book makes it finally clear that not
always does suffering come from sin. But clearly, Job did not see the
full expanses of the splendid picture we have just unfolded.

Could they have reached at least part of this picture? There were
grounds for doing that. First, they knew God is our Father-- cf.
Isaiah 63. 16: "Even if Abraham were not to know us or Israel to
acknowledge us, You , Lord, are our Father." And Hosea 11. 1: "Out of
Egypt I have called my son", that is, the whole people of Israel. Cf.
also Jer 31. 9.  But they did not know in how full a sense that is
true. They knew He had made them, yet. But they did not know that He
gave them a share in His own divine nature.  Further, they knew that
sin is a debt - that truth stands out all over the OT, the
Intertestamental literature of the Jews, the New Testament and the
writings of the Rabbis and the Fathers (on this cf. the appendix to
Wm. Most, The Thought of St. Paul, pp. 289-301). They knew further
the atoning power of suffering for others. This came out specially
strongly in the fourth Servant Song in Isaiah 53. It was found also
elsewhere in the Scriptures, cf. 2 Mac 7. 37; Dan 3. 35 & 40; Job 42.
7-8. .

Yet, even though the grounds, we might say premises, for reaching
these conclusions were present and were known, they did not draw the
implications from them.  Similarly, Jesus confuted the Sadducees who
denied the resurrection by citing for them the text of Exodus 3. 6:
"'I am the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. ' He is not the
God of the dead but of the living". - Yet, did most Jews draw that
deduction from those early words? We doubt it very much. Similarly,
although they had, as we said, the premises to reach much of the
picture we have painted, yet they did not really reach nearly all of
it. Instead in the conclusion to Job, the solution seems to be merely
that God would give back more than what He had taken away, but do it
in this life.

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