By the time i met my wife both of us had already stop practicing our faith. we would soon discover that the would turn to bite us down the road. the first five yrs of our marriage were horrible. there was a lot of anger, mistrust, no respect, lack of love, lack of appreciation and so much more. what is more sad is that i was at fault seventy percent of the time. often i would ask my self why am i going thru this, or why is god doing this to my wife and i. sometimes i would had pray to god but with a lack of love and respect and appreciation for who he is. so need less to say i felt that my prayer went on unanswered. there was good days and bad days, however the bad days out weight the good ones.
around that time of great suffering and depression in our life's. some how or some way we found Joel osteen on television and right away we were hook. i remember that back then we started it to listen to him and the advice he would give in regards to suffering. it would help us and give us some sort of relief to know that we could make it. that the suffering would soon come to pass because god did not wanted his children to suffer and that our suffering was caused by our separation from god and once we were reunited to god we would never suffer. i cant say for sure if back then i taught of going back to church or not. but i know we did not went back to church yet despite all the suffering that was going on. but even then i remember feeling that Joel's message was lacking something else that it was not complete regarding suffering but i couldn't tell what it was.
then finally by the grace of god an opportunity that i had been looking for opened up. to relocate the whole family from beautiful and sunny San Diego 75 degree weather to the not so beautiful but more homie weather of 105 degree summer day and mid 30s winter in the San Joaquin valley and i took it. i grew up in the valley and i couldn't wait to go back. thank god my wife followed me and we made the move. sometime after living here in San Joaquin valley we started it to attend our local parish church. i don't know the exact day and and all the fine details but thanks be to Jesus we started it to go faithfully on Sundays and never look back. but it was only until i return back home to the catholic church that i fully grasp what i was missing regarding suffering in our life's. it was then that i learn and realize why holly mother church teaches so much about suffering and why she protects it as well.
no body likes suffering believe me including me. i complaint a lot, i am a cry baby when it comes to suffering. it does not matter if its something big or small, it does not matter if i scrape my arm or if i get a flat tire on the way to work. i complaint about it and i lift my eyes to heaven and ask god WHY? we all have question and even god mad at god when that favorite family member passes away so rapidly without a single sign that she or he was in critical health condition.
the holy scriptures talk a lot about suffering. we suffer because we are sinners and it is just that we suffer to pay for our sins. we suffer because Christ suffer for us and die for us and it is just and necessary that we too suffer with him. we suffer because thru gods grace and our suffering we are sanctifying our self's before god and we are able to walk away from the sins that separate our self's from god. we suffer because we don't want to follow god the father as he has asks us to do so. we suffer because we don't want to learn from our mistakes. we suffer because thru suffering we can call our self's gods own children because thru our suffering we grow into a special relationship with the father, because thanks to the suffering we can finally begin to understand and appreciate the special sacrifice god the father did when he gave us his only begotten son. so that we may not perish in sin but have eternal life if it is our choosing. because we must make a choice to spend our ethereal life on heaven or in the fire that will never stop and will forever torture our souls as a fair and just punishment for separating our self's from gods love and presence and obedience thru the son and the holy spirit.
holy mother church teaches us that we must accept everything that we receive from god thru our daily bread regardless of how the suffering is in our life's. with out questioning god or getting mad at him, with out turning away from him. that we must also accept our suffering with a smile on our face from ear to ear. we must also accept and offered our suffering to that of Christ for the good of the world and his church. for example when we suffer we offered up our suffering to Christ and he in turn uses it to heal spiritually or physically someone somewhere.
this is one of the thousand reasons why I'm so grateful to god for giving us his church were suffering is not something we want to run away from but it is being taught to embrace it fully and gracefully. suffering is like a passing storm that will drop rain on the people, if we are not ready with our buckets to catch the rain the storm will be a waste of time. however if we are ready and we can catch all the rain we can, we can in turn use that water to nourish other fields were the fruits Will be plenty for the good off the world and Christ church. Christ has called each and everyone one of us to suffer and thanks to the suffering our faith, hope, love, patience, perseverance, strength, wisdom and respect will grow and when we grow we can finally love our neighbor as Christ told us to do so.
it is not easy to look at suffering in this way, as i said it before we don't like suffering including me. but i want to look at suffering this way and i need to try and practice to suffer this way. because only then i can truly truly be grateful to god for all the blessings i have receive in my life.
sincerely
Carlos Napoles
servant of jesus thru mary his blessed mother.
