I find this at the same time so true and so incredibly hard at the moment. I suffered three hearing losses in two months and the latest one brought me a constant ringing in both ears. With the first two I regained my trust in God immediately, never lost it, bore my cross patiently. But with this last one (two days ago) I am immensely struggling. Wish I was more willing to accept my cross and follow and trust Jesus completely but I would be lying if I claimed to do so at the moment. Please, pray for me that I can suffer more willingly and acceptingly, for HE IS with me even if I‘m lamenting or screaming. My will needs to go and be handed over to God, this is so hard. But I love Jesus. Thanks for reading.
My goodness if I had but a quarter of the grace and gift to speak with such truth and understanding in a non- legalistic way of Jesus’ love and suffering...for our purpose...wow! Thankyou Lord for Dr. Scott Hahn. I needed to hear it!
The Holy Spirit is working so beautifully in you Scott. I am a cradle Catholic and my faith is always enriched when I listen to your explanations of the faith. Thank you and God bless you and your beautiful family. 🙏❤
Jesus is the Way, Truth and LIFE! He is THE example of how we should live our lives and suffering was a big part; the purpose of his coming to us as the man-God. Therefore try our best to imitate Jesus/ when we do finally see HIM face to face=we will see a smile on HIS face and hear HIM say " well done my good and faithful servant"!!!
There's a bit of a disconnect (er)... failure to give a clear answer to the initial question "How to unite our suffering to Jesus Christ." Saying that I'm being a little obtuse because I get that evidently you mean that when we accept our suffering out of love it "works", but it would be nice to have a clearer picture how that works.
If you have the FORMED app, Scott Hahn has a wonderful talk titled “Answering Common Objectives Purgatory by Scott Hahn” about 28minutes in, he shifts more into suffering. It is SO good. So much information, I’ve listened to it almost 10 times. Hoping that talk may help you some. Peace be with you
@@TNt-vc2xs okay, yes that is helpful background. It's still... like he admits at the end, not completely clear or practical. In particular, I'm talking about suffering that I don't choose and hardly accept.
@@michaelmicek - I hope you are able to listen to the talk I mentioned... We are called to discipleship with Christ, to imitate Him: to love like Christ, to forgive like Christ, therefore we must suffer like Christ so we can be resurrected like Christ. I’ve been pondering St Paul scripture “I rejoice in my suffering...” and trying to learn from him. From my own experience and understanding, God allows suffering as an opportunity to turn to Him, to unite ourselves and suffering with Him. When things are good, God can easily be forgotten. I think of the book of Job and the suffering he went through. God allowed the devil to take everything from Job, but Job still had faith in God. The devil fell from pride, the opposite of pride is humility, in the devils case humiliation. When we turn from the devil and keep our faith, hope and love in God, it humiliates the devil. Sorry I may have gotten a bit dude tracked toward the end of my comment.
@@TNt-vc2xs I did listen to it before replying that it was helpful background to this present one. And I definitely think about Job. (And there was a recent daily reflection on Job that was helpful. ) The question is specifically, if you experience God as absent, which would seem to be a possible daily cross ("my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? ") how do you turn that around and actually join it to Christ? Although again, actually thinking it through to that point, where Christ can empathize with it and it is a possible participation in the Cross is also helpful.
@@michaelmicek - sorry I misunderstood you. I’m glad you were able to listen to that. Now I’m not sure I can answer your question, it is a good one and I must pray and discern it. I think of St. Mother Teresa who didn’t feel God for years and felt The Dark Night. Have you listened to Mathew Leonard’s “Three Stages of the Interior Life” on FORMED? We move through our Interior Life and feel the consolations and desolations of God. I’m not sure where you are at personally, whether your in desolation, or the demons you may be battening as well. Their is also “aridity”, when you may not have pleasure when praying, mass, etc I heard someone say, it’s like God is a parent helping His baby learn to walk (consolations you feel), at some point the parent has to let go and the baby must learn on their own, this is aridity. This is God letting you turn to Him to love Him for who he is, not what He does or can do, or how you may feel. This is where I’m not sure how to relate that to Jesus, other than the scripture you said. Have you read, “The interior castle, Teresa of Avila”? or “Union with God, Saint John of the cross”.?
You want nothing to do with suffering. Do you have any idea how much a spoiled brat you sound to someone like me who has 5 types of cancer? Suffering has a way of coming to you despite what you prefer. And everyone dies and death is rarely pretty. It is sometimes very ugly.
