Recovery has shown me that throughout most of my life I have suffered poorly, which is to say that I have loved poorly. For suffering and love are one and the same in a Christ-centered heart. The old maxim “offer it up” never made much sense to me. That is because the unconscious, self-centered principle guiding my decisions and behaviors was to avoid suffering at all costs. Suffering was an affront to my autonomy, a thief to my comfort, and a threat to my existence. My addictions were in large part a headlong flight from suffering. The terrible irony, of course, was that my futile efforts to dissociate from suffering only compounded, in my harm to self and others, the suffering all the more. My ability to will the good of the other for the sake of the other, to suffer and love well, was radically incapacitated. I was trapped in a narcissistic black hole from whose gravity only Jesus could set me free. God gave me the gift of that suffering to purify me of self-obsession and the delusion of self-sufficiency. It was only by coming to live in the truth of my brokenness as a sinner and an addict that I could even begin to learn how to suffer and love well.

In his work On the Incarnation, Saint Athanasius makes a most remarkable claim that provides the key for understanding how we come to suffer and love well. He wrote, “The Son of God became man so that we might become God.” The Church clarifies: “The Word became flesh to make us partakers of the divine nature” (CCC 460). If you meditate on what that means for just a moment, your heart should be overflowing with hope and joy! For as Catholics in recovery, we have access to the most precious gift there is in all of creation, given to us freely and in an entirely unmerited way if we are willing to receive it in trust and humility—Christ’s sanctifying grace, God’s divine life, in the sacraments. This is the way to sanity, sobriety, and salvation. This is how we become saints. This is how we “become God.” We receive the one who “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant” that our suffering may be redeemed in His sacrificial love (Philippians 2:7). We are remade anew in Christ and the Holy Spirit to fulfill that for which we were made—to suffer and love well for God and neighbor.

Saint Athanasius, pray for us!

Reflection Questions

• How has your journey in recovery revealed that you have suffered and loved poorly?
• What has suffering taught you about love and conversion? How do you suffer and love well today in recovery?

Daily Mass Readings

First Reading: Acts 15:7-21
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 96:1-2a, 2b-3, 10
Gospel: John 15:9-11

Reflection by Pete S.