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Real Suffering

Writer's picture: Fr. SeraiahFr. Seraiah

There is a website that I check regularly; it has links to articles that are significant for the Catholic faith. They are not all from an orthodox perspective; in fact some are specifically contrary to the faith (I will give the benefit of the doubt and presume that the webmaster is aware of this fact). Today I found a startling contrast in two articles that were linked side-by-side.


The first article was discussing the recent attacks on the Catholic Church from the Chinese Communist Government. In case you did not know, they are removing images of Christ and replacing them with images of the Communist dictator. Without actually taking the lives of Catholics (as far as we can tell) this is a blasphemous manner of persecution for the faith. Our brothers and sisters in China need to be in your prayers!


The second article (written by someone in America) was writing about how Catholics can turn to the Saints in the "stressful" times of baseball playoffs. Yup, you read that right. Please do not get me wrong here: I want people to turn to the Saints when they are experiencing stress. We are not, however, dealing with the stressful times of persecution for the faith, we are talking about a game. Yes, I like baseball--it is fun to watch--but it is nothing more (by which I mean nothing more) than a game!


I expect that the author of the second article did not know that the first article would be cited right next to his, so I am not criticizing the second author for his opinion of the first article (he may very well have a wonderful perspective on our suffering brethren in China). The physical proximity of the two articles links, however, should make us take notice at what types of things we appear to be concerned with. Are we really balanced in our view of what matters in our lives?


I remember recently hearing someone comment about how frustrated he was because he had to wait an extra four minutes for his food in the drivethru. Later, someone complained that the shoes she wanted to buy had increased in price from $100 to $150 (if you can readily spend $100 on shoes, you have very little to complain about). Why is it that American Catholics have gotten so soft? Because we have little to no perspective on what it means to suffer. We appear to think that if our favorite sports team loses a game is some kind of suffering (it is not).


This is one of the values of having quick international information available to us. It can remind us of what others are going through and help us to keep a right view of our own situation. Are you keeping yourself balanced in these things? You do not have to mourn and lament in sackcloth and ashes to view your suffering rightly, but we do need to realize we in America have it very easy (so far). Anyone who cannot keep a proper perspective right now, when true persecution comes, will crumble and deny the faith.

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