Suffering: Accepting the Cross You Have Been Given

+JMJ+

I have been having terrible problems for quite awhile in getting along with my elderly parents.  I have lived with and cared for them for 4 1/2 years, but the major anger problem I now have is quite new.

Although I pray constantly for relief, asking for my heart to change--confess the same lack of charity over and over again--I only improve for a short time and then I fall into sin again. It is frustrating, humiliating, and depressing:  I had a much better opinion of my virtue, but clearly, I was wrong, and I hate it.

Tonight after Confession, Father gave me this penance: to pray before the tabernacle and tell Jesus about all my struggles.  I did what he assigned me to do, and I received this insight:  I am suffering...yes, it is emotional suffering, not physical--but real suffering nonetheless; having to face the truth, that I am not the good person that I thought I was, is very hard to take.  Moreover, what I have been doing is refusing this suffering--asking Him to let this cup pass from me.  I have been asking God to take the suffering away--to make me better, not so that I will be more kind to my parents, but so that I will not have endure all this shame and frustration at my inability to change! Pride, pride, pride! What I should be doing is what Jesus did. "Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done."


This is apparently the suffering that He has sent me, probably something that I need, and what He has ordained for me to endure. So what I should be doing --and am now resolved to do---is to embrace it, to accept it in union with His suffering on the Cross, until such time as He chooses to release me from the grip of this ugliness within me.