The Seeds of Suffering
The root of all human suffering is sin. When we are in perfect union with God, we are capable of expressing full and perfect love towards Him just as we receive from Him. But the nature of love is selflessness, and when we start to focus on ourselves over others, we allow suffering to creep in. Perfect union with God means elevating Him above us and serving Him before we serve ourselves; if we feel insufficient or incapable of loving Him in this way, we only need to understand that He loves us exactly in this manner. He suffered first. He gave His life for us first. He gave us life. Our entire lives ought to be an exercise in reciprocating that love towards Him.
One of the great obstacles towards loving God as He ought to be loved is misunderstanding who He is and what role He plays in our lives. When we begin the journey of developing a relationship with God, we often adopt an infantile understanding of His behavior towards us: either we feel He is unnecessarily harsh in His punishments for our sins and mistakes, or He does not properly punish evildoers while they cause the suffering of the righteous. We must understand that suffering might be caused by sin, but suffering is not retaliation for sin. Suffering can always become redemptive, and as long as we live in a fallen world, we will suffer. If sin is selfishness and love is selflessness, we will only be happy in sin if we get everything we want at all times with no thoughts of anyone else. But if we suffer while we love, we can even find the joy, beauty, and happiness in suffering when we suffer for something or for someone. God suffered for us and did so willingly. He knew before the Incarnation what His people would do to Him, and He still became one of us to offer us salvation out of love. Still, even the holiest of people living in the Church today are enticed by the allure of sin because sin offers us self-satisfaction. In other words, sin feels good, which is why we even do it in the first place. In our initial infantile understanding, we may question why God allows sinners to thrive and saints to bear the burden of the world’s wickedness; however, Jesus often uses the imagery of a tree and its fruits to diagnose the nature of its goodness. The long-term fruit of sin that comforts and placates in the present is quite obvious–the slow erosion of morality and love in society. The long-term fruit of a suffering Church is also obvious because it is backed by evidence–as Tertullian famously stated, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. We grow and flourish when we adopt love as our identity, and there is no greater love than to suffer and die for others.
Christ continues to use the imagery of trees and fruits in this Sunday’s Gospel, but he offers a different message here. Why does God not strike down the wicked as He did in the ancient days? First, we must understand that we are in a more spiritually mature age than the humans of old; we no longer need to be punished like children, because we are no longer spiritual children. In the context of Christ, we don’t need corporal punishment to know what is right and what is wrong, or why we should seek righteousness and avoid evil. But more importantly, Christ tells us that a barren tree should not yet be chopped down because it still has the potential of bearing fruit. In each sinner walking among us today, there is the seed of a great and holy saint residing within their heart. We must not lose hope in the world. Instead, we should participate in the cultivation of holiness, find meaning and love in suffering, and take the righteous path rather than the comfortable path. Human nature recognizes the salvific and purifying quality of challenge and struggle because we inherently know that it produces long-term goodness. This is a community goal, one in which we must work together to make the world a better place. It can only happen, though, if we love God as we are meant to, to love Him in the same way He first loved us.
Today's Readings:
