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Chapter Two

Suffering

“If we only knew the precious treasure hidden in infirmities, we would receive them with the same joy with which we receive the greatest benefits, and we would bear them without ever complaining or showing signs of weariness.”

— Saint Vincent de Paul

Catholics often have a strange relationship with suffering — one that vacillates between near masochism in penitence or asceticism on one hand, and the refusal to practice self-discipline and restraint in actual practical matters like diet and exercise on the other. I’ve known Catholics who indiscriminately heap on devotions, but rationalize having a dinner consisting of cake and ice cream because “the physical is less important than the spiritual.” They run away from effort and physical activity and say, “God doesn’t care how I look.”

The other side of the coin is the people who “can’t” find an hour on Sundays to make it to Mass, but easily find an hour daily to exercise. They fit in work, play, and workouts without missing a beat, but with all that are “too busy” to give God any time.

The reality is that these people are actually doing the same thing most humans are best at: serving ourselves. When Saint Irenaeus said, “The glory of God is man fully alive,” he didn’t say, “the glory of God is man ignoring the body and trying to make up for it by doing extra soul work.” He also didn’t say, “The glory of God is man with a killer bod.” I’ll say it again: to be truly Catholic, we don’t separate our body and soul… but live as an integrated whole, as the embodied spirits God created us to be.

In our lives, God allows us sufficient suffering to perfect us. However, we need to accept that suffering, not run away from it and pick out a different kind of suffering we’re okay with or, worse, are really excited to wallow in.

We’ll all experience heartbreak and tragedy that tries our souls along the way. But more often we’ll experience the natural stress to our hearts and minds that trying to live a basic functional life brings. We get to offer all of that, both the big and small, both the life changing and the base line, to God. If I spend an hour in adoration, but spend an hour cursing LA drivers and stress-eating the candy bar I picked up at the gas station, what have I gained? If I go to church daily, but daily refuse to take care of my body, the temple of the Holy Spirit that God has entrusted to me, I’m missing the point.

God has given us bodies that need tending, that respond to exercise, that serve us better the more we put them into service. He’s also allowed that process to provide a fair amount of suffering. Why avoid that? God is giving you the opportunity to tend to the temple. It won’t be easy, but it will be worth doing.

Again, on the flip side, if you’re someone who says, “the gym is my church,” or “hiking is how I’m with God,” or “Sundays are for football or sleeping in,” you’re deceiving yourself. You can certainly offer the suffering of an extra set to God. You can certainly pray and feel close to God surrounded by his magnificent creation. You can certainly use playing a sport to love your neighbor and your enemy (you know, maybe your teammate and your opponent?) all at once. But if that takes you away from offering God the worship he asks of you, you’re missing the point. If you glorify the body to the detriment of your soul, you set up an opposition that shouldn’t exist, and you become less human, less fully alive, and less of who you actually are. At times, attending Mass, praying, or going to confession can be far from easy. But they are always good, maybe especially when they involve a kind of suffering. They give us an opportunity to tend the temple.

It took me most of my life to realize (and it still takes consistent reminders to remember) the truth I’ve mentioned several times here already: our bodies and souls should be one, not two parts, but one united person. Saint Paul points this out in 1 Corinthians 6:19–20 (although I only really understood it this way recently): “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” He’s speaking of a union of body and spirit; that’s what makes the temple. We belong to God; we are not our own. Through his death on the cross, Jesus bought us at a great price. The good news is, he bought us away from death, from the separation of body and soul that God never intended.

We’ll suffer both in body and soul, in small ways and big ways, not only when we do things that are bad for us, but also when we do the things that are good for us. Remember, that’s something Adam and Eve earned for us through original sin — that even the things that are good for us bring suffering. With their disobedience, work (which is good for us) became burdensome, food (which is good for us) took toil to acquire, man’s and woman’s desire for each other (which is good for us) became easily distorted, and even giving new life came only through great pains in childbirth. And because our wills are weakened and our intellects dimmed, doing what’s good in every capacity became more difficult.

Living for God and dying to self is challenging. But in Christ we have an opportunity to offer every single suffering back to him so that he can transform it to help us grow, to change us, to bring us closer to him. So don’t run away from suffering, especially the suffering that comes from doing the things that are good for you. Embrace it. Conquer your fear, laziness, anger, gluttony, lust, all the things that keep you incomplete, and master your body, mind, and soul. Then the suffering you’re bound to experience anyway will serve our mission: a life lived out by our souls through our bodies — one in which we can know, love, and serve God.