Suffering

     I picked up a small and dated book (1971) on one of my favorite saints last week. It was titled: I Knew Blessed Maximillian, and it was a first-hand account of one of the friars who wasa member of one of the monasteries founded by (now) St. Maximillian Kolbe in pre-World War II Poland (and in others places like Japan). He describes Fr. Kolbe as telling the monks prior to their friary being dismantled by the Nazis, about "...the three stages of life: first stage, the preparation for the activity; the second, activity itself; third, the suffering."
    I grew up in the ethos of the American form of ever-unfolding progress; things got better over time, with improvements through technology and historical reflection. For many years, I believed in scientific positivism, where research would increasingly yield a higher quality of life for all peoples. But I could never adequately answer why the poor got poorer, why genocide continued, why one war followed another.
    But St. Max not only preached the Paschal Mystery of suffering, death and resurrection, he lived it. Fr. Kolbe gave his life at Auschwitz for a poor farmer, who lived to tell of the Nazis allowing Fr. Kolbe to offer himself as an oblation for this individual. Suffering can often be senseless, but it can also be redemptive, and one of the most important "stages" in life. It can even lead to "all joy"!