There’s an old practice among Catholics that helps them deal with the irritations and suffering of life. Catholics call it redemptive suffering, and we say that we “offer it up” to God. Nuns would tell their students that if you have a pebble in your shoe, to leave it in there for a while—then offer up the suffering for Jesus who suffered for all of us on the Cross. It’s a nice little thought that I like very much. Just as we make offerings of our time, treasure and talent to the Church, we can make small offerings of “redemptive suffering” to the Lord. Catholics do it because they know they, themselves, are not perfect. And as a way of trying to make up for their failings, they impose a little self-penance.

Throughout the Bible, God’s people are making material sacrifices to Him. Abram took Isaac to the altar (in the famous last-minute divine switcharoo where God wanted a conveniently handy lamb instead). They slaughtered tons of fatted calves. Every year, Jews would butcher a Passover lamb. But when Jesus offered himself as the ultimate sacrifice, we gave up animal flesh for our own flesh—in a way of speaking.

This is how some people (yes, even today) decide on self-mortification for God. You hear of people whipping themselves, wearing hair-shirts, generally making life hard for themselves. It’s easy to dismiss them as religious nutjobs. In a lot of ways, I’d agree with that assertion. I understand those motives—however, I think I’ll steer clear from the hair shirts for myself.

But in college, I started applying this philosophy a little towards myself-- namely when I found the bottle. On the long mornings after some short nights, I’d forgo the Advil for my headaches. I figured that I’d made my own trouble and I deserved to live with my hangover. It was hardly a high form of suffering, but I gave what I had.

These days, I’ve been thinking more about “offering it up”. When someone cuts me off in traffic or when a coworker is getting on my nerves, I figure this is a way I can atone for some of my mistakes in life. It’s not Karma, mind you. It’s not way that the mythological fates are evening out the world. It’s much more personal than that. I fail at life CONSTANTLY. I am not the person I want to be, and when I fail, I should atone for those shortcomings. In this way, traffic becomes a form of atonement. The cube farm at work is a form of atonement. The hangovers are a form of atonement. The inevitable pebbles in my shoe are atonement. To me, every day is Yom Kippur. Each day is the day where I make up for my sins.

I read on Traditional Catholic messageboards that some people think of going to Mass in the suburban Vernacular Novus Ordo masses as a form of penance. On those Sundays that they don’t make it to the Tridentine Latin Mass at whatever TLM parish they attend (and typically drive halfway across town to get there), a lot of Traditional Catholic families just hold their nose and go to their neighborhood parish, which they consider a penitential way to meet their Sunday Obligation. This isn’t exactly my way of thinking, but I can appreciate where they’re coming from.

In the right context, redemptive suffering can be very satisfying.

But some things are some times where this redemptive suffering seems to fall a little short of a real sacrifice to the Lord.

For instance, right now, I’m suffering with a pretty wicked cold.

I’m not a very sickly person. I drink my Orange Juice and eat well balance meals and generally stay healthy. Hey, we all get a cold in the winter. Me too. But it’s usually the kind of thing where I take a handful of DayQuil pills and go on with life. But I’ve got one of these awful colds where it’s like I’ve just lost a leg. I’m tired, groggy and disoriented. The DayQuil isn’t working, neither is the Alka-Seltzer tablets. Just in case this is some new springtime allergy that I’ve just developed, I’ve also swallowed a few Benadryl tablets (hence the grogginess). But still, I’m coughing and hacking and running through Kleenex like I’m building a parade float in my living room. Really, how much snot does one human being have in their body? I mean, really.

This is indeed suffering. Is it redemptive? Do I blow my nose for the Lord? It’s hard to take redemptive suffering seriously when you’re swilling Green Death NyQuil before your evening prayers. I’d like to think that I could use this suffering to my everlasting advantage, but as an offering to the Lord it doesn’t seem to hold much gravity when I’ve tried to swallow any type of treatment to mitigate the suffering. But I couldn’t imagine any other way to deal with this cold. This thing is a doooooooooooosy here. This is a four-alarm, batten down the hatches, full-fledged MONSTER COLD here. We’re talking a Guinness Book of World Records kind of cold here. A donate my snot to science kind of cold.

Really.

“Offer it up?”

Doesn’t the Almighty God deserve a better offering than these Kleenex?