Transform our Suffering

November 16th is the annual Potato Pancake breakfast at St. Casimir. I invite everyone to stop out and enjoy! After the 10:30 Mass at St. Peter is a meeting for the Rome pilgrimage in 2026 for our 150th anniversary as a parish. We have a few spots left and I want to give members at St. Peter parish “dibs” on those spots, otherwise those spots would be opened up to the larger church community. We now have ‘hard’ numbers on the costs and would like to have a deposit and full registration for those who want to be a part of this once in a 150 years opportunity.

As we call to mind our loved ones who have died, the sense of loss and grief is a suffering we can not avoid. From Bishop Cozzens’ book, “For the Life of the World” I offer the following reflection. “One of the mysteries of the Christian life is that Jesus does not take away suffering. Jesus comes to redeem us, but he does not end suffering. Rather he enters into suffering and transforms it. He makes suffering a way of love, the way that he redeems us.”

We all have suffering in our lives. It is unavoidable, and Jesus promised it would be so.  He told us we must take up our cross and follow him. Normally, suffering turns us in on ourselves and isolates us from others. This is the natural reaction to suffering–it leads to anger, fear, or sadness. But Jesus wants to teach us how to transform our suffering as he did. He

wants to teach us the value of suffering, the gift of the cross in our lives. He wants to teach us that suffering can be a great force for good in the world, when we learn to unite that suffering to the offering of Jesus. In this way suffering becomes valuable and not empty; it is part of the redemption of the world. This is what we hear in the Second Letter to Timothy: “Bear your share of the hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God”(1:8). The person who lives a Eucharistic life learns the value of suffering…This is the famous Catholic teaching of “offering it up.”  Offering it up allows us to use the energy of love to transform suffering.  Suffering wants to turn us in on ourselves; love gives us the energy to transform suffering into self-gift.” (p. 78-79)

Father John Potaczek