For Memorial Day: How Do We Respond To Adversity? Raising the Flag of Adversity

It is good for you to have some troubles and adversities; for these make you enter into yourself, so that you may know that you are in a state of banishment, and so that you  may not place your hopes in anything of this world.

It is good that we sometimes suffer contradictions and that others have an evil or imperfect opinion of us when we do and intend well. These things are often help a disciple practice humility and defend against vainglory. For then we readily run to God, our inward Witness, when outwardly we are despised and little credit is given to us.

2. Therefore a disciple should be established in God so as to have no need of seeking comforts from others. When you of good will are troubled, or tempted, or afflicted with evil thoughts, then you will better understand what need you have of God, without whom you will find that he can do no good (John 15:5). Then you lament, you sigh, and you pray, by reason of the miseries which you suffer.

Such a disciple is weary of living longer, and wishes for death come and therefore be dissolved and be with Christ: (Phil 1:23).  Only then will you perceive that perfect security and full peace cannot be found in this world.

In this concluding paragraph, Thomas tells us that we should place our hope in the Lord, since, while we may believe that some day the lion and the lamb will lay down together (perhaps the Lion of Judah and the Lamb of God!), that right now we will continue to have tribulation in this world. So we keep standing up for the rights of the unborn, the poor, the widow, the orphan, even in the face of the seeming futility, because in this adversity a flag is raised to give others hope, since He has overcome the world.

 St. Christopher splashed into my mind here as one who suffered derision to the point that historians even doubt whether or not he existed.  But yet, he, or his representative, carried Christ, our inward witness.  As we carry Christ, we can more easily wade the deep waters that trouble us in our daily walk.  St. Christopher, please pray for us! -help us to be Christ-bearers.

tim