Who wants to suffer? Really. If someone asked you if you had a choice between suffering and not, would you choose to suffer? 

During Lent, Catholics are encouraged to practice praying, penance, and almsgiving, and through these, we are to make a sacrifice of ourselves. A sacrifice is to give up or lose something of value, which for me would indicate some sort of suffering. If the sacrifice was valuable, then to give it up would impose a pain or a hardship for at least a brief time. Yet sometimes our sacrifices are more for our own benefit. Since we get to choose what we sacrifice, we can mitigate the suffering it entails. The Church asks us to abstain from eating meat on Fridays, but do we instead use it as an opportunity to splurge on lobster, crab, or scallops instead? Do we wait until we account for all our bills for the month and then any leftover funds are used to give alms? Or do we pay attention to what we are purchasing and for superfluous items consider giving that amount to charity instead? Do we actively pray to forgive those who we find issues with, be it a family member, a coworker, or a politician in the news? 

This month the Magnificat devotional I use is profiling saints who received the stigmata for the saint of the day. Some saints are well known to have received it, like St. Francis of Assisi and Padre Pio of Pietrelcina. One that caught my attention was St. Rita of Cascia who received a wound of a thorn from the crown of thorns. She meditated upon and felt close to the sufferings of Jesus even before receiving this share in His sufferings. It makes me wonder if I’m a product of my generation where we seek comfort and convenience and avoid any type of suffering. I can’t imagine asking Jesus to participate in His sufferings. While I attempt to accept the sufferings that I encounter in my own life, I often buckle under the weight of it and ask God to relieve me of the burden. I get grumpy and impatient in my struggles, falling far short of the ideal these saints demonstrate.

In this season when we do focus much more on the Passion of Jesus, we may look with sympathy and appreciation that He suffered to be our Savior. Yet have you ever imagined if Jesus asked you to participate in that suffering, what would you choose? Would it be the constant weeping of blood from hands, feet, and/or side? Would it be the pain from the lashings of the Roman soldiers? Perhaps like St. Rita, would it be the agony of the crown? Maybe it would be a shoulder sore from the rubbing of the rough wood and the weight of the cross beam. Our sufferings in daily life cannot be compared to the suffering of Jesus, but we can offer them to Jesus as a share in His. He walks with us no matter what we are going through. When we fully trust in Him we can walk with Him, even in the most painful of circumstances, since it is only through the great Passion and Death that we can celebrate the Resurrection.