Botticelli, “Holy Trinity” , tempura on panel
The title for this post is the epigraph for my book. It took me. long time to find it—I wanted something perfect to encapsulate what I thought the book was about, and it had to have the right mix of seriousness and joy. Upon re-reading The Sign of Jonas while I was writing Living Memento Mori, this quote jumped out at me.
But a funny thing about different types of Christianity is how often we forget the truth of this statement.
I was recently reading Jinger Vuolo’s (nee Duggar) new memoir, and the “prosperity gospel” idea (aka, “God as Vending Machine”) is detailed throughout. The church she was raised in was huge on this (For context: Gothard was the founder/leader of her church):
“Gothard taught me that if I was suffering, there was a good chance it was because of some hidden or secret sin in my life. I was disobeying God in some way, and that was why I was experiencing pain and hardship. He even said that “most illnesses today are the result of bitterness, or guilt, or just lack of love.”…
“Just as problematic as Gothard’s opinions, however, was his guarantee of success for everyone who follows his rules. Gothard taught that the future I wanted—husband, kids, financial freedom, and health—would be mine if I followed everything he was teaching. He claimed his seminars were the key to success, and I was sure to get all those blessings if I obeyed. In other words, I was being taught a version of the health and wealth gospel.
“The health and wealth gospel is simply this: God wants to give His children money and physical health, but they must have faith that He will bless them. The size of someone’s financial success is proportional to the amount of that person’s faith and obedience. Here’s what Gothard said about money: “God uses riches to bless those who obey his commandments, and he removes money from those who violate his commandments.”…
“When I was a teenager, I would have said that I rejected the health and wealth gospel. Gothard himself would have criticized what prosperity preachers were teaching. But I did believe that obedience was the key to success in life. I was convinced that if I obeyed, God would reward me with the blessings. In other words, I believed the health and wealth gospel. ”
As I read, I kept thinking, but this isn’t the gospel at all.
The radical truth of the Incarnation is that it led to the cross. It led to extreme suffering. And it happened to the most perfect Man who ever lived.
To paraphrase St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, If Christ went to the cross, how do you think you’re going to get out of suffering?!
You’re not. There’s no way you’re going to avoid it. It doesn’t matter how good of a Christian you are, how perfect of a person you are—suffering is going to happen to you.
“Life is pain, highness,” says Westley in The Princess Bride, and it’s true. There’s no wonky interpretation of the gospel that’s going to change that. Almost all of the apostles died horrible deaths. St. Paul was beheaded. If you read the lies of the saints, you’ll see that a lot of them had severe trials to go through. That’s part of Christianity-—the part we don’t talk about very much, because we don’t want to be downbeat or negative.
But joy fully depends on the cross. We only get eternal joy, eternal happiness, because of the cross. There is no eternal bliss without death on a Friday afternoon.
Today (February 11) the Church celebrates the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. Our Lady appeared to St. Bernadette Soubirous, a very poor, often ill girl whose family lived in a former jail. In one of the most poignant parts of the apparition, Mary told Bernadette, “I do not promise you happiness in this life, but in the next.”
Yes, we want to be happy here. We don’t want life to be an unending “valley of tears”. But at the same time, we need to remember, as St. Therese said, that “this world’s our ship and not our home.”
There are lots of “benefits”, if you want to put it that way, to following Christ. But He didn’t say it was going to be easy.