December 20, 2005
Happy Holidays
This is the time of year when everyone goes around saying, “Happy Holidays” or, if they haven’t fallen victim to the culture wars, they may even say, “Happy Advent” or “Happy Christmas,” looking forward a bit to the Christmas feast.
I am using this phrase a bit ironically just now, because I am laid up with a bad injury to my leg. It’s just what I didn’t need. I have a lot of things to do this week, and I can hardly move. I slipped and fell on one step in the retreat house. I am so grateful to God that I did not slip and fall on the ice. It is one of those things that keeps you awake at night, and you can hardly walk at all.
While I was propped up in bed, I read an article by Charles Colson, the former political figure who was convicted of obstruction of justice in the Watergate scandal. He spent some time in jail, but came out thirty years ago as a devout and effective Evangelical Protestant preacher. In 1976 he founded Prison Fellowship Ministries, and in 1993 he received the Templeton Prize.
In a recent article which appeared in Christianity Today, Colson tells how, within a short period of time, two of his children were diagnosed with cancer and his wife underwent serious surgery. These things were not supposed to happen. How could God be watching over us, and allow one thing after another like this to happen?
Colson noted that in evangelical Protestantism, you are always supposed to be happy and announcing the Good News. How would this fit in? It is a very good question, not only for Protestants, but also for Catholics and other Christians. Why does God let these things happen?
Colson tells how he found strength and comfort from the words of Saints Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross about spiritual darkness, citing a passage from The Interior Castle and the Dark Night of the Soul. The two great Carmelite saints (the feast of Saint John of the Cross was on December 14) suffered a great deal during life and taught the rest of us how to find God in suffering. During struggles with faith and suffering, Colson notes that Evangelicals can turn for strength to these and other writers from “older and richer theological traditions.”
Colson found this particular quote from Saint Teresa revealing: “For His Majesty can do nothing greater for us than grant us a life which is an imitation of that lived by His beloved Son. I feel certain, therefore, that these favors [sufferings] are given us to strengthen our weakness.”
We Catholics need to take another closer look at our own tradition and the rich heritage we have received, through Divine Providence, from so many in the past. Far too many of us are unaware of our own treasures until someone from the outside happens to point them out to us.
Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR
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