The greatest test of your faith won't come from routine encounters in your work, family or social life. Nor will it come from extraordinary challenges or temptations. No, your greatest test will be whether you will trust God when you suffer, or whether you will, in the words of Job's wife, "curse God and die."
In Suffering with a Purpose, Dom Hubert van Zeller helps you prepare now for all your sufferings in life by enabling you to see them with the eyes of the Spirit.
Van Zeller, the wise author of Holiness for Housewives, maintains that you can understand the mystery of suffering only by means of the Passion of Christ. In this book, he explores the fourteen stages of the Passion narrative, plumbing the inner meanings of each in order to reveal why there has to be pain, and what you should do (and should not do) about it.
In his explorations of the Passion, van Zeller uncovers a great deal to help you through dark times. He reminds you that suffering, properly understood, cannot and should not extinguish happiness, and shows you how to accept your crosses with love.
Above all, van Zeller shows you that suffering has a purpose, and he uses Christ's Passion to sharpen your vision of life's meaning. With help from this perceptive book, you'll learn how not to grow disheartened or to give in to discouragement, but to see your crosses for what they are, and to bear them with perseverance.
Turn your sufferings into a path to salvation as Dom van Zeller shows you:
- The astounding signifi cance of Christ's decision to appear among men as a failure
- What Christ's falls on the way of the Cross can teach you about your own sorrows
- The importance of being willing to share in the sufferings of others, and to carry their crosses as if they were your own (Do you dare?)
- How you can grow holy and give glory to God even in the crosses that you feel too weak to carry
- Why it is not, in fact, healthier to focus on enjoyment and trying to avoid all suffering
Paul Chaloux was born in Maine in 1960 to Paul and Dolly Chaloux, the oldest of 6 children. He grew up in Northern Virginia and attended public schools. After graduating with a chemical engineering degree from the University of Virginia in 1982, Paul worked for over 30 years as an engineer, manager, and strategist for IBM in upstate New York. While there, he also served as a catechist for 15 years at St. Columba Parish in Hopewell Junction, NY. In 2015, after earning a master's degree in religious education from Fordham University and retiring from IBM, Paul was accepted into the PhD program at the Catholic University of America to study Catechetics, with the goal of teaching future catechists. However, his plans changed dramatically when he was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson's Disease just after moving to Washington, DC for his studies. His new neurologist, after learning that Paul was studying theology, asked him why people suffe
