Something Stronger

Jesuit Priest Gregory Boyle says that in the Monastic tradition, the highest form of sanctity is to experience hell, and not lose hope.

That’s not easy, is it? It is not easy to trust that somehow, some way, God is going to make this right…

That doesn’t mean that things will always turn out in ways in which we initially hoped. But this promise is the promise of our faith. It is the promise of Easter. That even out of the midst of the greatest suffering, pain, and hurt – God can bring something new, something stronger, at times even something beautiful…

Perhaps the end of the story is not yet written.

Yesterday I reflected on the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis. I imagine, a betrayal like the one he endured, the pain he suffered, the years spent in an Egyptian prison could so easily embitter the soul. He could have so easily become an angry young man – and later a cynical, bitter angry old man.

But something in Joseph could see the bigger picture. He said to his brothers, “God sent me before you to preserve life. You might have meant this for harm, but God used it for good.”

I think also about Paul. Here was a man who had been imprisoned many times over, who had been shackled and beaten, shipwrecked, who by the time he was writing this letter, knew the end of his life was near. And yet in the book of Romans he writes, “All things work together for good…”

What would it be like to have that level of trust? What would it be like to be someone so rooted in our faith, that we could forgive people who may have wronged us, cheated us, stabbed us in the back? What would it be like to be people so assured of God’s hand at work, that even when we feel lost in the darkness, or when we find ourselves dwelling on past mistakes or failures we’ve made, we could remember: God can do something even with this? All things work together for good.

Let us pray: Grant us, O God, the ability to see with the eyes of faith. Give us the inner strength and resilience to ever move into the future with hope. And gift us with the assurance of heart to trust that in all things, you can bring light out of darkness, hope out of despair, even life out of death. Amen.