We are all suffering.
The road of life is difficult. Human freedom, nevertheless, is real. It is woven into all of this mess. The love of Jesus is also real, and it is offered to us within all of this mess.
Our lives therefore, are inescapably dramatic. Love is always possible in this life. So too is sin. We know this if we are honest with ourselves. We know when we have freely chosen to do something that is evil. The weight of our human condition may diminish the blame we deserve, but we still know that we must take responsibility for the things we do wrong.
We must examine ourselves honestly, and repent of our sins.
It is true that our myriad human afflictions can reduce (in various ways) our measure of responsibility for the evil that we do.
But nothing in our particular human condition can turn evil into good. If something is morally destructive in itself, there are many aspects of our burdened humanity that can make it less destructive for us. But there is nothing that can make it good for us.
If our misery drives us to plunge deeper into more kinds of misery, this is a sorrowful event that should evoke compassion, solidarity, and the effort to help. We deserve this solidarity, each one of us, because we are human beings!
But we cannot use our misery to justify ourselves. We cannot redefine the constraints of our misery as an “alternative form” of human fulfillment that we have a “right” to create for ourselves. It doesn't work. We remain miserable. Even if the whole world told us we were happy, would it make any difference, really?
Self-justification is a project that ends in despair.
It doesn't help, however, simply to point this out. Because we all remain broken and in need of healing. We need healing.
Jesus is the gift that brings healing and hope.
Jesus heals us from our sins and begins to heal the brokenness all the way through us, to lift up our humanity, to empower our freedom, and to enable us to embrace the mysterious path of suffering for ourselves and others.
Our destiny is the glory of God, and His glory is our healed and transformed humanity in which we are brothers and sisters of Jesus forever right down to our bones and nerves and tissues, right down to the delicate and exquisite balance of all our parts, to the depths of spirit and mind and heart and flesh and blood.
The human person: alive and whole forever. Filled up and flowing out with joy.
The hope for every human person is Him. God wants each and every human person to be transcendently beautiful and free forever. He wants to make us His adopted children and lead us into His Kingdom where we will see Him face-to-face and live forever in communion with Him and with one another. He has made us for eternal life, and has promised to bring us to this integral fulfillment when we trust in His Son Jesus and follow Jesus present in the life of the Church.
This is the hope that enables us to taste even now the promise of fulfillment. This is the hope that generates the compassion which we are called to have for one another, the interest in life, the building up of the good in this world, the struggle to move forward without being crushed by our own burdens.
In all things, He is our hope.