Christ the Cornerstone

God pours his grace upon us in good times, tough times

Life can be hard sometimes, filled with challenges to meet and obstacles to overcome. Our Catholic faith recognizes this, and it does not offer us false hopes or empty promises. After all, our guidepost is the cross of Jesus Christ, who was rejected, humiliated, tortured and killed by the very people he came to serve. If Christ is our model, how can we possibly overlook the reality of pain and suffering?

In the second reading for the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, St. Paul shares with us his experience living his faith in good times and in hard times:

I know how to live in humble circumstances; I know also how to live with abundance. In every circumstance and in all things, I have learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry, of living in abundance and of being in need. I can do all things in him who strengthens me (Phil 4:12-13).

St. Paul goes on to say that God supplies whatever he needs to remain faithful to the way of life that the Lord has called him to follow. We know that the road that this great missionary traveled would end in a martyr’s death. But we believe, with Paul, that this was not really the end of his journey but the beginning of his eternal life in Christ.

This belief makes all the difference in our understanding of human suffering. Because we believe that Christ’s passion and death were vindicated by his glorious resurrection and ascension into heaven, we have good reason to hope that if we follow him faithfully, we can join him. In fact, the Lord told his disciples (us) that he was going to heaven to prepare a place for them (us).

Heaven is not a geographical site somewhere in the material universe. It is a spiritual reality, the state of being in love with God in communion with all his angels and saints. Our faith assures us that eternal happiness awaits us if we follow in Christ’s footsteps and live as he did—a life of self-sacrificing love. This is the certain hope that allows us to endure every kind of physical, mental and evil suffering for the sake of the kingdom that is to come.

In this Sunday’s Gospel (Mt 22:1-14), Jesus tells the chief priests and elders of the people a parable that can be seen as both an affirmation of the joy that awaits us after death and a warning that if we reject the Lord’s invitation to share in his life, we may find ourselves cast out into the darkness “where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth” (Mt 22:13). Jesus is not saying that his Father is vengeful or vindictive, but he is warning us that, as free people, our own actions can determine what happens to us—both during our lifetime and after death.

Just as heaven is not a physical location, hell is also not a coordinate on some subterranean map. Hell is also a spiritual state of being. It is radical loneliness and unhappiness. If we reject God in favor of ourselves, we get exactly what we have bargained for. We get isolation and hopelessness. In scriptural terms, we trade the joy of the heavenly banquet for the misery of everlasting “wailing and grinding of teeth.”

The first reading for this Sunday (Is 25:6-10) offers reassurance:

The Lord God will wipe away the tears from every face; the reproach of his people he will remove from the whole Earth; for the Lord has spoken. On that day it will be said: “Behold our God, to whom we looked to save us! This is the Lord for whom we looked; let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us!” (Is 25:8-9)

Our God wants us to be free from every evil, including the self-imposed suffering and isolation that results from our sinful behavior and our refusal to follow Jesus on the Way of the Cross.

Salvation in Christ Jesus is cause for rejoicing, not guilt or fear. Yes, we are warned not to reject our Lord’s invitation, or the result will be the intense suffering and loneliness symbolized by “wailing and grinding of teeth.” But the choice is ours, and as

St. Paul tells us, God’s grace is sufficient to help us overcome every difficulty we face in our efforts to live as Jesus commands.

Let us rejoice in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Far from being instruments of torture and death, the crosses we bear out of love for God and our neighbor are blessings that can sustain us as we continue our pilgrim journey to our heavenly homeland. †