No Love Without Sacrifice, No Happiness Without Love: On Love and Pain

 Today’s readings are a reminder that there is no love without suffering, but there is no happiness without love. There is no love without self-sacrifice: “If anyone wants to become my follower, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:21-27) There is no happiness, no life without love: “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.”

1. Peter had just received the name “Peter” and had been established as the future foundation of Christ’s Church. He is now called “Satan” by the same mouth that proclaimed him rock (cf. Matthew 16:18, 23). Why? Because Peter thought that human beings could be saved without the Cross. It is as if Jesus were saying to him, “Satan is the one who tells people that they can be saved without the cross, without penance and living the selfish lifestyle of the world. Satan is the one who told me to use my powers to impress people and have an easy life (cf. Matthew 4:1-11). Peter, you speak like him! On the contrary, I came as a victim of expiation for many sins. Without my suffering there will be no redemption. Even more, my suffering will transform people’s sufferings into redemptive offerings.

“I did not come to replace you as victims. I did not come to take your sufferings away. I came to suffer so that your own sufferings, in union with mine, may obtain from God the mercy you need.

“Replacing you as victims would have taken away from you your responsibility for what you did. Not coming to endure the Cross would have left you with nothing to offer. Instead, now, in union with me, you can be pleasant victims to God. In union with me, all of your actions, all of your sufferings and even your death become a precious gift to my Father, an offering worthy of Heaven. You are now members of My Body: whatever you do or suffer, the Father sees as if it were done or suffered by Me.”

2. We are like a holy offering to God because we are one with Christ. This is why St. Paul can say, “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (2º Reading: Romans 12:1-2) Every good action, even every good desire is now rewarded with Heaven. “Whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward” (Matthew 10:42). “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:21). But we need to persevere in good deeds and not surrender to evil: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (2º Read). When we are in a state of grace, every good deed, even the most insignificant, increases our reward in Heaven. If this is so, then imagine the reward of those good deeds that are done in the middle of suffering, or amid persecutions!

3. True love of God knows about suffering. I will try to explain this. If we love God, then we are sorry for our offenses. If we are truly sorry, then we want to make up for what we did, we want to do penance. If we want to do penance, then we need, we even desire the cross. Our love is not innocent. Love after offending the beloved makes reparation, wants reparation. This is why there is no love without carrying the cross. We are naturally inclined to help those who carry something too heavy for them: for example, when we help people who are moving. When we see our innocent Lord carrying the cross of our own sins, we should naturally desire to help. If we don’t, it is like we are the ones moving, and leave Him with all the work and just watch…

4. There are other sufferings connected with love that are more difficult to explain because they are, in a way, beautiful, like a sign of perfect love. True love is like gold purified by fire. The prophet Jeremiah was being persecuted for proclaiming God’s message. He was tired of suffering and felt like giving up. But he reflected: “If I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,’ then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot” (Jeremiah 20:7-9). You see? Doing the will of God meant for him distress and persecution outside; but not doing it was worse, because it destroyed him inside. God’s love was like a fire within himself, like a fire meant to flare up in his life and light up everyone around him.

Finally, true love is like a thirst: “O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Psalm 63). Being in love is painful until the union is perfect. In the perfect love of God, there is a mixture of joy and pain, the joy of anticipation and the pain of not being there yet… the joy of God’s touch and the pain of our present darkness… The suffering of the delay…

Loving is painful until pain itself becomes love and is transformed into joy. When you realize that the very pain you suffer is what brings you closer to God Whom you love. What is that cross that we should take up? What should we deny ourselves in order to follow Jesus? What could we offer God as a penance for our sins? What should we offer? May the Lord grant us to experience perfect love, the one in which the joy of the union overcomes any pain.