A long, long time ago when I was around 30 years old, I was having trouble with my right ankle. It would sometimes lock up for a while and couldn’t move at all. The doctor found that I had small rock-like particles growing within my ankle that needed to be removed. After the surgery, I was told that because of the surgery and the years of wear and tear of the particles on my cartilage and bone, I would never be able to do anything involving running again. I was relatively young and active and it was as if my world had come to an end. All I could think about were all the things I would no longer be able to do and all of the other things I might one day want to do but couldn’t. I was miserable for quite a while.

I know someone who developed macular degeneration. As their vision problems increased, so did their self-pity along with their desire for others to pity them as well. Even though to most people this person had everything, they allowed their vision problem to also blind them to the countless blessings in their life.

I have a good friend who has some very serious health issues. But more than the health problems and what might be in the future for them, is the overwhelming feeling of uselessness they have now because they can no longer do the things they used to do, the things they want to do, the things they enjoy, the things their friends and others all around them can still do.

I have another friend with serious health issues who has told me that if and when they get to a point where they are home or nursing home bound their life will be over because life for them will no longer be worth living—their life is about being active and being able to help others.

As human beings, and even as Christian human beings, many of us seem to have so much of our self-worth and self-image intertwined in our health—in our security—in our age—in what we can do—in what we want to do—in what we can no longer do—in how we think others see and think of us—in how we want others to see and think of us—in how we believe this world expects us to look and to act.

Whether we chose to call it a Cross, suffering, trouble, trial, tribulation, hardship, adversity, misery or affliction, many of us have a really difficult time when things don’t go the way we have planned. We may be good when it comes to helping others carry their Crosses but our pride and our ego can keep us from being good at allowing others to help us carry ours.

Maybe that’s because when we are presented with our Cross, like me and my ankle and like my friends I talked about earlier, our tendency is to turn inward. We turn our attention to ourselves and necessarily at the same time we turn it away from God. All things become about us. We see only the downside, we cannot imagine how there could even be an upside. We begin to focus on what we can no longer do and the person we can no longer be. We lose sight of what God can do with this new us—this new re-fashioned in the image of Jesus us—this new Cross bearing us.

And we begin to pray for God to take our Cross from us and to restore us to what we were. We cannot begin to see that something we see to be so bad can be seen by God to be so good.

But there are people who do see their Cross, suffering, trouble, trial, tribulation, hardship, adversity, misery and affliction as good. And not only do they see them as good, but these people are shining examples of what God can do with us when we have been given a Cross—when we stop looking inward on what we can no longer do, but instead begin to focus on what God can do with us now that we have been made more like him.

St. Teresa of Calcutta said “We are at Jesus’ disposal. If he wants you to be sick in bed, if he wants you to proclaim His work in the street, if he wants you to clean the toilets all day, that’s all right, everything is all right. We must say, “I belong to you. You can do whatever you like.” And this ..is our strength, and this is the joy of the Lord.”

St. Edith Stein said “Whatever did not fit in with my plan did lie within the plan of God. I have an ever deeper and firmer belief that nothing is merely an accident when seen in the light of God, that my whole life down to the smallest details has been marked out for me in the plan of Divine Providence and has a completely coherent meaning in God’s all-seeing eyes. And so I am beginning to rejoice in the light of glory wherein this meaning will be unveiled to me.”

St. Augustine said “Let us understand that God is a physician, and that suffering is a medicine for salvation, not a punishment for damnation. Trials and tribulations offer us a chance to make reparation for our past faults and sins. On such occasions the Lord comes to us like a physician to heal the wounds left by our sins. Tribulation is the divine medicine.”

St. Bernadette said “It is in loving the Cross that one finds one heart, for Divine Love cannot live without suffering.”

St Francis de Sales said “The Prayer of the sick person is his patience and his acceptance of his sickness for the love of Jesus Christ. Make sickness itself a prayer, for there is none more powerful, save martyrdom!”

St. Jean Marie Baptiste Vianney said “On the Way of the Cross, you see, my children, only the first step is painful. Our greatest cross is the fear of crosses. . . We have not the courage to carry our cross, and we are very much mistaken; for, whatever we do, the cross holds us tight –we cannot escape from it. What, then, have we to lose? Why not love our crosses, and make use of them to take us to heaven?”

St. Teresa of Calcutta said “I wonder what the world would be like if there were not innocent people making reparation for us all? Today the Passion of Christ is being relived in the lives of those who suffer. To accept that suffering is a gift of God. Suffering is not a punishment. Jesus does not punish. Suffering is a sign—a sign that we have come so close to Jesus on the cross that he can kiss us, show us that he is in love with us by giving us an opportunity to share in his Passion. Suffering is not a punishment, nor a fruit of sin; it is a gift of God. He allows us to share in his suffering and to make up for the sins of the world.”

Jesus told us that whoever wants to come after him, must empty himself of himself, take up his Cross and follow him.

Notice Jesus made how we deal with our Cross optional.

The choice is ours.