Life is damned hard. No matter who we are, we will experience great loss. We will suffer unspeakable pain. We will try and endure painful illness. Ultimately, we'll die. Life is difficult, for everyone, and it's easy to feel sorry for ourselves.
Fr. Don spoke to this recently:
In Lamentations 3:23 we hear that God’s mercies are new each day. On our part, each day can see a new beginning. An unhappy past, a bad day, a bad week, a bad experience must not sour us on today, tomorrow, the future. A middle-aged writer in the course of an interview revealed that as a child of ten he had come home from school to find his mother murdered. Years later and with that singular background he was able to sum up what that experience and life had taught him, something helpful for us as we begin again. He said: "The abandonment of self-pity is the beginning of wisdom." There is no reason we should not put behind us the hurts and failures of yesterday and begin anew today.
Hard to do, indeed, especially when we're mired in the middle of a painful episode. Maybe it would make things easier to look around and recognize and those you see either have, are, or will be suffering a similar fate. We are comrades in pain, and through his passion and crucifixion, even Jesus joins us.
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