This morning I heard some politicians in the UK bemoaning the bewildering numbers of suicides, especially among men, in the West. It was difficult to hear their reports and stories.

Mental health. It is not enough to throw more and more money at the problem. If at bottom our deepest unattended personal problems are fundamentally spiritual, no amount of money, political shenanigans or personal ambition will fulfill us or give us real security.

We used to know that.

If our sufferings, personal disappointments and failures* are in the final analysis seen as meaningless, we are to be pitied. Add to this our unatoned sins and we are potentially in big trouble, which can lead us to despair.

If our political fables and endless new programs create only emptiness and leave us chasing our own tails, we only exhaust ourselves in futility. We then have created a dank, empty, secular society where human beings wander aimlessly looking for they know not what.

A society in which we ungratefully anathematize the only Name which can help us, which today is rejected out of hand, the Word which is our very foundation, is it any wonder it reduces all to bewilderment —or worse?

When the Person of Jesus Christ alone is forbidden, and so his consoling forgiveness, meaning and peace are lost to us; when we cannot begin again in Him, is it any wonder we are facing more and more dire personal crises which often enough end in tragedy?

Politics cannot save us. We can either choose Him whom we once knew, the Alpha and Omega of being, or we can choose Pontius Pilate and Barabbas. But that latter way only leads us near to Judas’ sorry end.

Politics cannot heal what ails us. At best it butters our bread, and feeds but half man’s hunger.

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* Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magalene writes, 

“Unfortunately, however, we do not always cooperate with His grace; many times pride, egoism, and all our other uncontrolled passions turn to evil what God has planned.for our good. If we had accepted lovingly and with resigna-
tion that difficulty, that trial, or disappointment which God had permitted for the sole purpose of providing us with.an opportunity to practice virtue, we should have made great.progress; but by giving way to impatience, by protesting and complaining, we rather added to our failures and infidelities. We should cooperate with grace more readily and strive to maintain our soul in an attitude of open docility to all the invitations to virtue which God is continually sending us by means of the different circumstances of life.” — from Divine Intimacy

The Fellowship of His Sufferings

1 Peter 4:13

but to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exultation.

Philippians 3:10

that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings

Mark 8:34

And He summoned the crowd with His disciples, and said to them, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.

2 Corinthians 1:5

For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ.

Col 1:24

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, ²⁵ of which I became a minister according to the divine office which was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, ²⁶ the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now made manifest to his saints. ²⁷ To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. ²⁸ Him we proclaim, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man mature in Christ.