When faced with a severe test of faith

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

THAT gospel episode about a Canaanite woman practically pestering Christ to cure her daughter who was tormented by a demon (cfr. Mt 15,21-28) gives us a precious lesson about what to do when we are faced with a severe test of faith where God may appear to be unresponsive to our petitions.

And the lesson to learn is to just persevere in begging God for the help we need, never losing our faith in God’s goodness and compassion. To be sure, God would not really mind the disturbance we give him. In fact, he is all there to help us. We should just persevere in asking. He is never unmindful of our needs. He even knows what we need before we ask him.

We just have to learn how to do this as much as possible without a great deal of tension and anguish. Yes, along the way we may have to suffer, but then again, if done always with God, we can manage to be calm and confident, knowing that nothing is impossible with God.

The experience of a bad break, a misfortune, a huge difficulty, etc., can and should be converted into an occasion to grow in our faith in God. And we can somehow know that we are growing in that faith when we learn how to continually beg God without losing our peace.

In fact, there would be an abiding sense of acceptance of whatever takes place at the moment together with a strong hope that provides us with a deep confidence that everything will be taken care of.

We know that with God, everything is taken care of. What we cannot take care, God will do it for us. Of course, God’s ways are not our ways. They may differ greatly from what we like to happen, but definitely God will take care of everything. He will solve, complete and perfect what we cannot anymore solve, complete and perfect. Nothing is impossible with him. We should just trust him.

This reassurance has been revealed to us by Christ himself. He was willing to offer his life for our sins and for whatever misfortunes we can suffer in this life. And he conquered them all with his resurrection. If all our misfortunes are suffered with Christ, we for sure will also take part in the resurrection of Christ.

Before Christ’s supreme act of love to take care of everything and to save us and to bring us back to God, we already have been reassured of this wonderful truth of God taking care of everything with the example of Job who was severely tested by all kinds of trials and misfortunes. But with his strong faith in God, he stood his ground and in the end was amply rewarded by God.

We need to toughen ourselves and cling tightly to what our faith tells us whenever we suffer some kind of misfortune in this life. For this, we have nothing else to do but to try our best, always asking for God’s grace, to assume the mind of Christ with respect to his suffering and death.

Part of a good accepting attitude is the ability to be flexible and resilient without getting confused and lost about what is absolutely right or wrong, true or false, real or unreal. We have to know how to adapt ourselves properly to different kinds of people, conditions and situations in our life, etc.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com