Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - March 24, 2024
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”
PALM SUNDAY
“The Lord scourges those who are close to him in order to admonish them” (Judith 8:27). Before you take that as “gospel truth” I'd like to suggest that it is one in a whole collection of such phrases that have come down to us over the centuries. All of them try with little success to answer the cry of suffering people, “Why? Why me?” Isn't it a bit like the phrases we all use ourselves in times of grief or the serious illness of friends? We say, for example, “God is trying to teach us something.” Or, “God never gives us more than we can bear.”
The very devout parents of five boys and one girl had returned from a pilgrimage to a Catholic shrine in Europe. Their profound faith shows in the deep and unshowy faith of their children. Shortly after their return their youngest son, a twenty-year-old college student, was discovered to have a brain tumor, malignant as it turns out. Even with seemingly successful operations to remove it he was quite weak, has abiding headaches. It crushed his faith-filled parents to see this and to be so helpless. “Why?” his mother asks repeatedly. Is God scourging these good Christians “in order to admonish them?”
If they need admonishing the rest of us need much worse. The phrase doesn't seem to fit any more than many other similar ones. This is not a materialistic, God-forgetting family but rather models of faithful Christian lives. There is really nothing we can say that helps in this situation. Unsatisfying as it may be, we can only assure them of prayer and try to be present to such suffering people.
Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”
