I don’t know about you but I’ve always had something of an aversion to those sayings, oftentimes one-liners, that we can frequently say to each other, especially when someone is going through a difficult time. Expressions like “everything happens for a reason,” can easily roll off our tongue and they are well intentioned to be sure but oftentimes when they come out of our mouths, maybe when I hear them especially come out of my mouth they can sound kind of hollow, a little trite, and rarely actually bring the comfort we intend for the person we are talking to who is going through a rough time. Surely Paul’s words in the second reading today must fall into this category of a trite expression. Well intentioned to be sure but not really capable of delivering much comfort to those of us who are in need of it today. How could he possibly say something as absurd as, “I consider that the sufferings of the present as nothing as compared to the glories to be revealed in us.”

Try saying that to the woman who wakes up in such pain she can’t get out of bed unassisted. Try saying that to the parents who have watched their child make mistake after mistake and now is facing serious jail time. Try saying that to the man who has watched wife of 70+ years decline due to fail over a year ago and now visits her all day every day in the care facility in which she lives. Try saying that to the parents who will be celebrated the funeral last week of the daughter who was stillborn. Try saying that to my mom who for a number of years has been in serious pain and who goes to bed every night without any prospect whatsoever of waking up the next day feeling better. Try saying that to any of us who are here today with the sufferings that we’ve brought to the Lord’s altar.

Surely this must be just a merely pious platitude spoken to us from some ivory tower theologian, well intentioned to be sure, but who is unacquainted with suffering the likes of which you and I know in our lives. Well to answer that I would say we need to know who it is that’s writing this, what it is he’s not saying, and how it is he can possibly say it.

The who is St. Paul and far from being someone who is unaware or unfamiliar with sufferings and tragedies and mishaps, St. Paul was someone who was very familiar with pain.

Five times, Paul was whipped by the Jewish authorities, each time, receiving on his back, thirty- nine lashes. Three times the man was beaten with iron rods. Once he was apprehended by a crowd, they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him to death and they did such a good job of it they left him thinking he was dead. Three times he was ship wrecked; once, the boat he was on sank and he spent a night and a day adrift at sea unsure if he was going to drown or he was going to get rescued. This was a man who was very familiar with pain. Very familiar with pain. So when he speaks to us, it’s worthy of our attention. Can you imagine what the body of a man who has been beaten with rods, who has been stoned and left for dead, and who has two hundred lashes on his back looks like?

This is the one who is speaking to us today, who is communicating God’s truth to us and I think especially God’s truth to those of us who are here today who are finding the cross that we are carrying to be heavy right now and who are on the verge of being discouraged.

But it is important to remember or to understand what St. Paul is not saying. Paul’s not saying that he considers the sufferings of the present, whether his own or our own, as nothing. That would be ridiculous. Some of us here today are in the midst of severe, true, honest, debilitating pain. Of various kinds.

What Paul is saying is that he considers them as nothing in comparison to something.

Just like the rigors of grad school are nothing in comparison of the rewards with the degree and the job that the school went towards. Just like the sweat and the toil of two-a-days in football are nothing in comparison to the payoff of winning a state or a national championship. Just like the pains of childbirth are as nothing … maybe not so much on that one.

What Paul is saying is that the sufferings of the present age are as nothing in comparison with the glory of the resurrection. So how could Paul say that? What does Paul have? Paul has faith. And faith has many components to it. But perhaps the most important component to faith, especially to us in this culture, is to realize that faith is a way of knowing. Faith enables the person who has it to see life accurately. And conversely, the person who doesn’t have faith is living in a kind of ignorance and blindness. Faith is anything but blind.

Because of faith, Paul knows that everything is, is quite simply, because God freely chose to create it out of love, most especially us. There is no reason for you or me to exist. We exist because, quite simply, out of his great love, he willed us into being. Everything is totally gratuitous.

Because of faith, Paul knows that suffering was never in God’s design. That it has entered into the world because of the fall, because of the rebellion of Adam and Eve and that before the fall, there was no suffering, no pain, no disharmony between the sexes or races, no natural disasters, diseases, or pandemics. No hardship of any kind.

Because of faith, Paul knows that even though we as a race turned our back on God, God never turned his back on us. In fact, out of his indescribable or unimaginable love for us, he became one of us, allowed his creatures - us - to mock him and nail him to a cross and to kill him. Because of faith, Paul knows that the God who has done this, who has died for us, who has risen for us, this God is the one who has the last word.

Because faith, Paul knows that there will come a day when there will be no suffering, no sorrow, no pain, no disharmony, no natural disasters, no tears, and above all, no death.

Because of faith, Paul knows this is a real day, a day when our bodies, our lives, indeed, all of creation as he tells us today, is going to be transformed in the glory and the wonder of the resurrection.

Paul knows this. And because he knows it, he can say to you and to me, here and now, I consider the sufferings of the present age as nothing in comparison to the glory to be revealed in us. This is not a pious platitude. This is truth.

I don’t know about you but I am in need of some serious good news right now. I am tired of hearing about the the economy, the unrest in the world, the ongoing moral decay of our culture, the increasing attacks on human dignity on so many levels. It seems to me the devil’s most common and frequent and powerful attack on me and on most of us is discouragement.

And the Lord’s word which is spoken to us today and which descends on us like rain, in which it is up to you and to me to let it get planted in our hearts, is spoken to us today simply and quite frankly to tell us to hold on. To hang in. To persevere. To not get discouraged. To keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, most especially on his cross and on his glorious resurrection in which each of us is going to share.

So let’s pray in earnest this week, for ourselves, for our whole parish family, that the Lord will increase in us, asking the intercession of St. Paul, the gift of faith. For it is a gift, we got to ask for it. So let’s ask for it. So that we might see life accurately so that we might live our lives filled with hope, even in the midst of hardships and of the cross so that we would know that God never ever abandons his creatures. And so that we might share this very good news in the world in which we are living.