The grace of suffering
By Father Marian Zalecki, OSPPE
Special to the CS&T
I often told people at the Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa, where I have been preaching for the past 40 years, that I was afraid for my salvation because I had not suffered much.
My whole life, I enjoyed the best of health although I had seen the suffering of many people in nursing homes, in hospitals and even in their own private homes. With their loved ones, I prayed with and for them.
I think the Lord heard my complaints for I did not have to wait long to receive the grace of the cross. On Aug. 6 last year, the Feast of the Transfiguration, I was diagnosed at Doylestown Hospital with colon cancer. It was not easy for me to accept that my death was approaching.
So many people visited my hospital room the nurses had to put a sign on my door asking visitors not to stay more than five minutes. There was a procession of people who wanted to see and encourage me, including Bishop Thomas G. Wenski, the Ordinary Bishop of Orlando, Fla.
One woman brought a large image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Some people brought relics and water from Lourdes. I was very moved to see the goodness and sincerity of their love for me.
Now I can see clearly that this illness was a sign given to me, like that of Mount Tabor. The Good Lord told me: “My beloved son, my priest of the New Covenant: your hour has arrived. You are to undergo your own spiritual transfiguration and purification.”
This is the special grace of Jesus’ transfiguration. Out of His infinite love, He is allowing me to share in His suffering and pain, for which I am eternally grateful.
After all the people had left my hospital room, in the long hours of the night, I felt a little lonely. I kept my eyes turned to the miraculous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I knew that she loved me very much. It was out of love for me that she gave me this cross. I kept praying for the other people in the hospital, the doctors and nurses, who, like angels of God, take care of the sick and dying. It is a beautiful profession.
I know how many people prayed for me. To them, I am quite grateful — because of the many prayers and moral support in my time of suffering, so far I am responding well to my treatment, and I hope for a full recovery so that I may continue my humble service to all who come to the Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa.
While at night, I was thinking of those good people in the hospital, I wondered whether they understood the great mystery of human and Christian suffering.
All the people of the world suffer. No one is exempt from the cross. Old and young, even little children dying in the arms of their mothers, suffer.
Suffering is a great mystery and a part of our existence on this earth.
When I lived in Poland, I visited the concentration camp of Auschwitz. In the museum, I saw pictures of thousands upon thousands of human bodies burned to ashes in the furnaces. It turned my stomach to look at these terrible pictures.
I also had the privilege of seeing the death bunker of St. Father Maximilian Maria Kolbe, the Polish priest who offered his own life for a fellow prisoner. There was nothing in the bunker but a large burning candle which reminded the visitors of God, our Light and our Immortality.
Being a priest of Polish descent, I was so proud of him. He has become my spiritual hero and example, particularly in his great love for Our Lady, the Immaculate Conception.
I was thinking also of St. Edith Stein, the Carmelite Sister Benedicta of the Cross, who offered her life for the Jewish people, and also as a faithful daughter of the Church; she suffered agony, humiliation and death.
Before I left the camp, I thought of what people do if there is no faith in their minds and no love in their hearts; of the German officers, who did not believe in God and did not know his laws — that they could do the most terrible things because they believed only in themselves as a superior race.
Many people wondered then: Where was the God of love and mercy, that these horrible things were allowed to happen?
As I said before, suffering is a profound mystery. How can human beings resolve the mystery of suffering?
It can only be resolved in contemplating the mystery of the cross on which our blessed Lord died on Calvary.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus suffered loneliness. He battled with himself, and asked His Father to release him from suffering the passion and death he was to undergo. But it is only in the cross of Christ Crucified and his sufferings that we understand the meaning of human and Christian suffering.
Our late Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, gave to all of us a powerful witness of the value and, we could even say, necessity of suffering in our lives. Who can forget the great effort he made to be with, and even speak to, people the last few days of his life?
In his last book, “Memory and Identity,” published just before his death, he reflected, in the very last sentences of the very last chapter, on the event that took place during his attempted assasination in St. Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981, and of all that transpired in the world from the time of the first apparition at Fatima on May 13, 1917 to the present.
“There is no suffering which [God] cannot transform into a path leading to him. … The suffering of the crucified God is not just one form of suffering alongside others, not just another more or less painful ordeal: it is unequaled suffering … Christ gave a new meaning to suffering, opening up a new dimension, a new order of love,” Pope John Paul II wrote.
“It is true that suffering entered human history with original sin … but the Passion of Christ on the cross gave a radically new meaning to suffering, transforming it from within. [Jesus] introduced into human history, which is the history of sin, a blameless suffering accepted purely for love. All human suffering, all pain, all infirmity contains within itself a promise of salvation, a promise of joy,” our beloved late Pope wrote.
That applies to all forms of suffering called forth by evil, he said, including the “enormous social and political” evils that divide the world today: war, oppression, social injustice, human dignity being trodden underfoot, racial and religious discrimination, violence, terrorism, the arms race.
Pope Benedict XVI recently commented on that passage: “All this is not merely learned theology, but the expression of a faith lived and matured through suffering. Of course, we must do all we can to alleviate suffering and to prevent the injustice that causes the suffering of the innocent. However, we must also do the utmost to ensure that people can discover the meaning of suffering and are thus able to accept their own suffering and to unite it with the suffering of Christ.”
Being a Christian, sharing in the sufferings of Christ — that is the way that leads us to eternal life. When we join our own suffering with the suffering of Christ, it can serve as our purgatory on earth.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: “All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.” (CCC 1030) Therefore, it is better and easier for us to pay by lovingly accepting our little sufferings for our wrongdoings here on earth than to suffer the flames of Purgatory.
When I meditate on the sufferings of Christ, especially when I pray the five sorrowful mysteries of the holy rosary, I think of our Blessed Mother of all Sorrows.
I try to think of how she accepted her suffering, and lived out the prophecy of the old man Simeon, who served in the temple.
When he took the divine Child in his arms, he uttered a strange prophecy: “Your heart will be pierced with the sword.”
She never forgot this strange prophecy; it was finally and completely accomplished at the foot of the cross. By one thrust of the Roman soldier’s lance, two hearts were pierced: the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
The presence of the Blessed Mother at the foot of the Cross is a tremendous help to all suffering people. She is the Mother of all Sorrows. She keeps saying with the prophet: “All of you who pass by, look at me, is there any sorrow as my sorrow?” (Lm 1:12)
The Second Vatican Council spoke beautifully about the unique relationship between Mary, the mother of the Lord, and Mary, the mother of the Church: “By reason of the gift and role of her divine motherhood, by which she is united with the Son, the Redeemer, and with her unique graces and functions, the Blessed Virgin is also intimately united with the Church.”
In the 1992 edition of the “Collection of Masses of the Blessed Virgin Mary,” which is approved by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, there can be found a Mass in honor of “Mary at the Foot of the Cross II,” which I love to offer as often as I have the opportunity.
In the introduction to that Mass, there is a beautiful teaching on Mary’s role as mother of Christ and as mother of the faithful: “When Mary became the mother of Christ ‘by the power of the Holy Spirit,’ she became by a further gift of divine love ‘a partner in His Passion, a mother suffering with Him.’”
The beginning of the Mass echoes the prophecy of Simeon, which linked the destiny of the Son and His mother. The prayers of the Mass recall the plan of salvation by which God joined Mary’s suffering to that of Jesus, and decreed that “the new Eve should stand by the cross of the new Adam.”
The suffering of the Blessed Virgin in the drama of salvation is rightly celebrated, because she stood by the cross of the Lord “firm in faith, strong in hope, burning with love.” She endured the greatest of pains in bringing forth to new and divine life the family of the Church, though she had brought forth her Son without the pains of childbirth.
I have watched the movie, “The Passion,” many times and I have learned much from it. Especially, I watch our Blessed Mother’s behavior; she collects the blood of Jesus spread all over the floor — and there is much blood shed — and then she walks just behind Him as he carries his heavy cross.
There is a lovely scene when the eyes of Jesus and his Mother meet. She says to Him: “I am here.” She is always at Jesus’ side. Even with her eyes filled with tears, she never loses sight of her Son — especially during his bitter Passion. When Jesus is about to expire, she says to Him: “You are my Son, my body and my heart. Let me die with you.”
What a love she has shown. Did she ever complain because of her suffering? She did not. She knew exactly what was going to happen, and lovingly submitted herself to the holy will of God.
As we are about to enter Lent, let us pray for all the suffering people of the world, that they may understand the grace of their sufferings and sorrows.
Suffering and tears are good for the soul. The sufferings we all experience, whether physical, mental or emotional, are a very special grace.
I have accepted my sufferings as a priest and victim of Christ. When I say Mass, I join our Blessed Mother, whom I love with all my heart. It is for me a very special grace that will prepare me for Life everlasting.
Now, I have nothing to fear or to lose but all to gain. Life everlasting is waiting for me.
Father Marian Zalecki, OSPPE,is stationed at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Czenstochowa, Doylestown, Pa.