While this may make him upset, as he won’t be able to reply with his sincere but misguided personal interpretation, or simply ignore what he did not want to see. I’ve lifted part of the sermon of a priest friend of mine on the topic of the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross.

Below is a snippet from Fr. Roberts sermon, (His last name, and no relation to me)

[quote:te7a5icz]”Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his Body the Church.”

Paul is not trying to say that Jesus’ death on the Cross is objectively lacking that Christ’s blood is insufficient to pay the price for our sins. That would contradict what he wrote just a couple verses before in Colossians. While Jesus’ death is enough to save us, God the Father’s plan for our salvation involves our cooperation with His saving will. He wants us to be instruments to bring His grace to others in His Holy Church.

We become Christ’s instruments by becoming like Him: Jesus prayed frequently, if want to be like Jesus, we must pray frequently. Jesus forgave those who wronged Him, if we want to be like Jesus, we must forgive those who wrong us. Jesus accepted and embraced suffering on the Cross. If we want to be like Jesus, we must beg our heavenly Father for the grace of first accepting and then embracing our sufferings.

And when we allow grace to help us welcome suffering, we become channels of God’s saving love.

Think about it for a moment. Suffering is an unavoidable part of life. We might be able to avoid suffering here and there through our industry and determination, but it is impossible to escape it altogether. Our choice is not whether we will suffer or not, but how we will respond to it. Will we become bitter and selfish or will we receive it as an opportunity to come out of ourselves and become more loving?

When one puts it like this, all of us would like to choose the way of love over the way of bitterness. Our experience with suffering teaches us that it isn’t easy. When we suffer, we come face to face with our mortality. We realize that our bodies and souls lack something of the life that they were created to possess. Suffering is a vague premonition that one day we will die. And before the dark uncertainty of our mortality, we want to grab onto something, even if that something is a self-righteous anger, questioning God why He is letting this happen to us. [/quote:te7a5icz]