The accident at a construction site in which eighteen people lost their lives when a tower collapsed on them would most likely have faded into the mists of oblivion had not our Lord in today's Gospel used the accident as an example to teach us about the meaning of human suffering.  And perhaps the most important thing our Lord teaches us about suffering from this example is that not all human suffering is a direct result of one's own sinful actions; in other words, all suffering is NOT punishment for sin.  Or those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them— do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem? our Lord asked His listeners.  By no means! He replied, answering His own question.

          But that's a very human tendency, isn't it?  To equate suffering with punishment.  As a priest, I see it all the time.  When we get called to the hospital, or in the really tough cases when we get called to the ER for trauma and accident victims, I often encounter patients who feel that the suffering they are undergoing both physically and spiritually is somehow punishment from God, and the really difficult cases are those people who feel they are being punished by God for no good reason, that they are being punished unjustly by a God who actually enjoys inflicting pain on His creatures.

          Well, in today's Gospel, God's own Son, our Lord Jesus Himself is telling us that all human suffering is not a direct result of one's own sin, but rather that suffering is inescapable for each and every human being, just or unjust, righteous or unrighteous.  Suffering is part and parcel of our human condition.  It is part of the mystery of what it means to be a man or woman on the face of this earth.  The Venerable Pope John Paul II, a man who knew his own fair share of suffering, went so far as to write about a solidarity or a community of the suffering; that it is in our own experience of suffering that we can most clearly identify with our brothers and sisters who also suffer, that, in a very real sense, all humanity is united to one another through our common experience of the mystery of suffering.

          Human suffering, however, goes far beyond merely physical pain or discomfort.  All animals can experience that kind of suffering.  No, human suffering also entails moral suffering, spiritual suffering.  And because we, as human beings, are made up of both body and soul, an affliction of one or the other usually involves suffering in both body and soul.

          Suffering, at its root, is an experience of evil.  Think about it for a moment.  Think of the suffering you undergo when someone you love stops loving you.  Each of us is made for love.  We are meant to love and be loved.  It is an essential need of every human being.  When we are deprived of love, that is an evil, and we suffer in our deprivation.  Evil is essentially a deprivation, a lack, an absence of good.  A particular action or even a person we identify as evil is something or someone in which goodness is lacking or is somehow distorted.  Illness is an evil, and it causes us to suffer because when we are sick, our bodies or sometimes our minds lack the wholeness, the soundness they ought to have, in the normal order of things.

          Suffering in one form or another, which in inevitable in this life, can either crush us, destroy us, or else it can make us stronger, purify us.  I'm sure each one of you could think of someone you know for whom suffering has been an experience of growth, in whom suffering has served to bring out all the best characteristics that we admire in a person.  And we could probably all name someone we know and love who has been crushed, destroyed by the suffering they have had to endure.  Suffering can cause the human heart to grow and expand, to embrace especially others who suffer, or it can cause the human heart to shrivel up, to harden, to close in on itself.  And perhaps most importantly, our experience of suffering can draw us closer to God, or it can drive us away from God, especially when we wrongly blame God for allowing us to suffer.  But that, as I said, is a very common human response to the experience of suffering.

          When we are suffering, when we are sick, we cannot help but consider our frailty, our helplessness, our mortality.  Sadly to say, for many people it takes the experience of suffering and sickness, of needing help to get better, in order for them to start considering the transcendent nature of their life, to start wrestling with the big issues -- of life and death, of sin and suffering, of heaven and hell, of who they are and who God is.  Suffering always has this "warning" character for us, and we can choose either to heed or to ignore the warning of suffering.  That is what our Lord is talking about in today's Gospel about the need to reform our lives.  Unless we are living our lives in a way that acknowledges God's sovreignty over us, that acknowledges that God is the Creator, the Giver of life and the Source of all goodness, and that we are His creatures, sustained in existence only by His love, unless we are living our lives with that knowledge, then when suffering inevitably comes our way, it can easily crush us, destroy us, rather than transform us and raise us up.

          What our Lord is telling us in today's Gospel, and what St Paul was warning the Corinthians about in our second reading when he said, These things happened to them as an example, and they have been written down as a warning to us, upon whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore, whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall, is that we shouldn't wait until we are in the crucible of suffering, until we are staring death in the face, to start worrying about the big questions, to start reforming our lives.  Because a time comes for all of us when it will be too late.  There is a time when the fig tree will be cut down if it fails to bear fruit.  But in the meantime, the One who cares for the tree, the One to Whom the Master of the Vineyard entrusted the care of His garden, that is to say, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, has promised to hoe and to fertilize in order to coax the tree into bearing fruit.

          That's a rather vivid image for the role of suffering in our lives, isn't it?  It's like a gardener who breaks up the hard soil and dumps manure all around (neither of which is a very pleasant experience!), but both are done only in order to restore the tree to life, to cause the tree to flourish, to bear fruit that will last.

          And we can endure the experience of hoeing and manuring, if you will, we can walk the path of suffering because we are not asked to walk it alone.  Our God has walked the path before us.  Our task is to follow in His footsteps, not to blaze our own trail.  And the path that our Lord Himself trod, the Way of the Cross, does not end at Calvary.  Oh no, you and I are to follow Him straight into Paradise!