Memorial of Saint Peter Claver, Priest

Lectionary: 437

I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his Body, which is the Church, of which I am a minister in accordance with God’s stewardship given to me to bring to completion for you the word of God, the mystery hidden from ages and from generations past.


Several years ago, I attended a public lecture by a local cardiologist. The talk was given to members of a nearby fitness club; nearly everyone in the room invested time and money working with weights, treadmills and other aerobic devices.
I heard an audible gasp from several people when the doctor said not one in fifty of his patients walk more than a quarter mile daily for the sole purpose of exercise.
But the room was more silent when he said the Baby Boom generation would crush the American medical system like an elephant stepping on a mosquito. We should, he said, expect a catastrophe.
That was more than ten years ago and we are now watching the catastrophe unfold. Discussing a universal health insurance plan for all Americans is rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking Titanic. 
We cannot afford our own health care. Nor do we have enough trained doctors, nurses, technicians and support staff to care for our elderly, sick and dying patients. Nor are Americans willing to cease their self-abusive habits of idleness, over-eating, smoking, and alcohol consumption. We are not even willing to import low wage workers for our nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
Aging spouses, adult children and -- in some cases -- parents must take up the slack, caring for those who cannot live "independently" any longer. Many wives and husbands, who are in fact the patient's current spouse at the end of a long series, finding themselves overwhelmed with inadequate resources, will abandon the sick to their doom.
Our experiment in freedom which was defined as "letting me do what I want to do regardless of anyone else" is coming to its predictable conclusion. 

Amid this crisis we hear Saint Paul saying, "I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake...." He invites a society that has regarded every form of suffering as unnecessary, pointless and passe to reconsider. Might poverty, inconvenience, disability, disappointment, and pain be a sharing in, and filling up of what is lacking in, the afflictions of Christ? Might this ordinary human experience have some intrinsic and essential value? 
Is there a spiritual opportunity here which I have long overlooked?