VII
Edition February
2000
Heart to heart
"The
Gospel of Suffering"
EDITORIAL Mother Adela Galindo,
Foundress, SCTJM
© Only for
personal use
Dear Brothers and Sisters:
The Holy Father, John Paul II, has convoked the
Jubilee of the Sick on the 11th of February, a
day in which we commemorate and celebrate the
apparition of Our Lady to Bernadette in Lourdes.
I believe that this desire – to unite on this
day all of the sick in Rome, Lourdes and
throughout the world, and to pray that the
abundant graces of this Jubilee would flow upon
them and for them – was a particularly eloquent
gesture. It has been his desire to entrust all
those who suffer in some way to the protection
of Our Lady of Lourdes.
The Holy Father has desired to emphasize the
fundamental importance of suffering and the
person who suffers. He wanted to tell the whole
world that suffering has a positive
significance, and even more, becomes a
wellspring of life for all of humanity when it
is lived with Christ.
The Holy Father invited us to understand the
redemptive value of suffering, which is central
to our faith. He explains to us, especially in
his apostolic letter Salvifici doloris,
that all those who are sick can offer their
sufferings to Christ in order to find its
meaning; in this way, their sufferings can be
united to the sufferings of the Redeemer, who
transforms them into a rivers of overall health,
even sometimes physical.
During the celebration of the Holy Mass in St.
Peter along with thousands of sick, the Holy
Father proclaimed words that were full of love
and of great challenge for all of us: “My dear
brothers and sisters that suffer, we are greatly
indebted to you. The Church is indebted to you.
The Holy Father too. Pray for us!”
The Holy Father wanted to emphasize a message
that was very close to his heart, which he has
spoken on many occasions to all of humanity
throughout his pontificate: the sufferings of
those who are sick, together with their prayers,
are a powerful force of grace and salvation for
the Universal Church.
In all of his apostolic trips, the Holy Father
visits and has an encounter with those who are
sick and suffering. In the Czech Republic in
1997, he gave a vision of suffering that is
worthwhile for us to mediate on: “Each one of
you make up a hidden force that contributes in
great measure to the life of the Church; with
your sufferings you participate in the
redemption of the world. You are also placed by
God as a column in the temple of the Church so
as to be a firm support. The Church, my dear
sick brothers and sisters, thanks you for your
patience, your Christian resignation, and even
more, for the generous and sacrificial manner in
which you bear, sometimes even heroically, the
Cross that Jesus has placed upon your shoulders.
You are close to His Heart. You give a
courageous testimony in this world often poor in
values, which often confuses love with pleasure
and which considers pain as something without
meaning.”
Do the sick understand how they are “pillars of
the Church,” how in their external and corporal
weakness they are constructing, not only their
spiritual temples, but also those of all of the
Church?
If only we would understand the power of
suffering in the light of the Cross of Our Lord!
The Holy Father understands so deeply the value
of suffering united to the suffering of Christ,
especially in those moments when man is in
greater danger due to sin. For in his Marian
meditation on May 29th,1994, after having spent
four weeks in the hospital, he told us these
words that echo unceasingly in my heart:
“By means of Mary I desire to express today my
gratitude for the gift of suffering, associated
once again with the Marian month of May. I
desire to give thanks for this gift. I have
understood that it was a necessary gift. The
Pope had to suffer. I have meditated on this
through out my time in the hospital. I have
reencountered the figure of Cardinal Wyszynski,
who, from the beginning of my pontificate told
me: ‘If the Lord has called you, you must take
the Church to the Third Millennium.’ I have come
to understand that I must take the Church of
Christ to the Third Millennium with prayer, with
various initiatives, but I have seen that that
is not enough: I need to take her with
suffering, with this assassination attempt and
with all those new sufferings. Why now? Why this
year? Because this is the year of the Family.
Precisely because the family is in danger, is
being attacked, the Pope must also be attacked,
the Pope must also suffer, so that everyone in
the world may see that there is a gospel, that
we can call, superior: the gospel of suffering,
with which we are to prepare the future and the
Third Millennium.”
The gospel of suffering! Is this not, in fact,
the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ? Isn’t His
Cross, in fact, the most eloquent gospel?
The Blessed Virgin in Fatima asked the small
children in Fatima during Her first apparition:
“Do you wish to offer yourselves to God, to
endure all the suffering that He may be pleased
to send you, as an act of reparation for the
sins by which He is offended, and to ask for the
conversion of sinners?” My brothers and sisters,
let us not waste suffering. Let us unite it with
Christ and with His Cross. Let us offer our
pains for the good of the Church and for the
salvation of many who are far from the Lord.
May this millennium be of the Two Hearts!
In the Love of the Pierced Hearts,
Mother Adela, SCTJM
Foundress
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