Msgr. Pope on the Role of Trials in Bringing Us to Spiritual Maturity

"We live in a world of unprecedented comfort: electricity, indoor plumbing, heating and air-conditioning, medicine, healthcare, abundant food, myriad consumer products, and entertainment available with the click of a button. Despite this we do not seem more grateful or at ease than our forebears. If anything, we are more anxious. For example, though people have never lived so long nor been so healthy, we have never been more worried about our health. 

"One would think that such abundance and comfort would lead us to be exceedingly grateful and to overlook small setbacks, remembering how much more difficult life was for our ancestors - but the opposite seems more often to be the case. We seem to be easily frustrated and to have little tolerance for enduring even the most minor suffering. Our comfortable couches have made us soft and our countless options have made us overly particular and easily annoyed. There is an old saying that 'Expectations are premeditated resentments.' We certainly have a lot of expectations these days, many of them unrealistic in the long run. The insistence on everything being perfect seems to rob us of the happiness we should enjoy. Everyone wants the ideal, and if there is any ordeal, they want a new deal.

"We seem to have lost the idea the idea that life is a time of testing for us. We live in paradise lost, and there are going to be difficulties. . . ."

In a recent commentary, Monsignor Charles Pope (pastor of Holy Comforter-Saint Cyprian Parish, Washington, DC) reflected on how trials and tests help us to gain self-knowledge and self-mastery as well as having purifying and humbling effects.

To access Msgr. Pope's complete post, please visit:

Community in Mission: The Role of Trials in Bringing Us to Spiritual Maturity (3 MAR 20)