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On this day, we hold in ourselves the memory and present reality of suffering. On every day of the year, somebody carries a suffering: an anniversary of death, maybe the loss of innocence or health, of a love or of a job. These sufferings are real, and we can’t just delete them. What, then, can we do? Give up? Inflict pain on someone else? Run forever?
Christ carves out another way—Paul points out—not a way out of suffering, but a way in suffering. Within us is hope. Hope, as Pope Francis has pointed out, is worked out with our hands, in the flesh. It is not mere optimism or positive thinking, but “hope for glory,” the radiance and life of God-with-us. We can give God flesh in everything we do. Isn’t that glorious?