By George E. Pence III–
As the test of what the potter molds is in the furnace, so in tribulation is the test of the just.
Sometimes during the readings at mass my mind wanders. Perhaps I can lay some of the blame on seeing mass as primarily about the eucharist, the sacrament itself. That priority is widely shared, and it has led many Catholics to give less attention to scripture than we should – whether it’s to the readings or to the bible generally.
Recently, I have adopted a small gesture. I pick up the mass-book and review the readings before the service begins. I know – it’s a small thing – but if nothing else it reminds me of my larger obligation to scripture.
On a recent Sunday I read the passage that begins this post. It comes from the 27th chapter of Sirach, and it introduces a theme discussed in subsequent readings. That theme is to pay attention to what a person says because their words reveal their character.
That’s an important lesson, especially now when harsh language is so common in the public sphere. Yet what had particular power for me was the metaphor Sirach used comparing tribulation to a furnace and character to the clay in a potter’s mold.
It is common to say that tragedy and hardship reveal a person’s character. It is even more common to say that character is a source of strength when dealing with hardship. Those things are true, but that understanding casts hard times as simply something to be endured. Good character is a way to resist the effects of misfortune in the way that good health avoids illness.
In that understanding good character becomes an antidote to hardship, while hardship itself has no value.
For me the worst part of pain or loss has always been the nihilism that may accompany it. People experience loss, but for what? A father dies and leaves a teen aged daughter, cancer becomes someone’s diagnosis, a business fails. All these things are painful enough, but in the end to be left with only emptiness gives crushing emphasis to that loss. It makes pain seem futile and it deprives loss of any purpose. Suffering has no greater destiny than the suffering itself.
But Sirach sees human tribulation as something quite different. Tribulation is not exclusively harmful. To him human suffering has an essential, affirming and creative role in the development of character.
Fresh from the mold clay has no color, no glaze no strength nor utility. For the potter’s vision to become real the clay must pass through the furnace. The furnace isn’t some kind of gratuitous duress, it is an integral part of creation.
That definition of suffering imbues pain with value and meaning. Bad times are not to be regretted; they are to be seen as a necessary part of transforming human life into a work of art. In Sirach we’re invited to give meaning to hardship, beauty to pain, purpose to sadness and destiny to loss.
