Struggle Is Necessary
The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast
Ascension
4.9 • 7.7K Ratings
🗓️ 31 December 2020
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It may sound counterintuitive, but choosing the harder path may make our life easier. Here’s why:
When caterpillars go into their cocoons for hibernation, they struggle against the barrier of the cocoon for months on end, trying to get out. It’s only when their wings have developed and they’re strong enough to fly that they are able to break free and escape. If a caterpillar were to somehow get set free from its cocoon before it was strong enough to escape on its own, it wouldn’t be able to fly, and would eventually die.
The same is true in a way for us. When we face struggles in life, they have great potential to make us stronger. Not only do hard things make us stronger, but they prepare us more for harder temptations, trials, and suffering in the future. In a way, we are made more able to handle future struggles because of the little hard choices we make daily.
Some struggles are greater than others, and maybe there are some things that you are constantly trying to avoid because they are so hard for you to do. But nevertheless, these are the struggles that you are faced with. These are the things God wants to make you stronger through. Because he knows what you need to continue on your path, and he knows that these struggles are not only going to make you stronger, but will intensify the victories he has prepared for you. There are some things that come from struggle that are so much more glorious than a scare-free life, and the Lord is ready to show you what triumphs he has in store for you.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If we're going to be the kind of people that God has created us to be, we need to engage |
| 0:04.4 | in the struggle. |
| 0:13.6 | How many of his father Mike Smith and this is a sentence that presents, oh, I'll go, |
| 0:16.1 | I came across this story. |
| 0:17.5 | It's kind of a fable, maybe it's a true story of a man in an emperor moth. |
| 0:21.5 | So here's the idea. |
| 0:23.2 | Here's a man who's out in the woods and he comes upon a cocoon of an emperor moth and |
| 0:27.5 | he recognizes it for what it is. |
| 0:29.4 | And so he carefully cuts off the stem of branch that the emperor moth is hanging off of and |
| 0:35.7 | brings it to his home. |
| 0:37.4 | And so he wants to watch this, this, you know, caterpillar, he's entered this cocoon, this |
| 0:41.4 | larva, whatever, become an emperor moth. |
| 0:44.9 | He watches it day after day. |
| 0:46.9 | At one point, he starts, he sees movement and then there's a hole at the top of the cocoon. |
| 0:53.4 | And then the movement stops. |
| 0:55.8 | So the man in order to like assist the moth to like get out of the cocoon, he takes just |
| 1:03.3 | a small pair of scissors and he kind of just wideens the opening, clips a little bit away |
| 1:09.0 | and he essentially helps the moth come out of the cocoon so that it doesn't have to struggle, |
| 1:14.1 | it doesn't have to be uncomfortable, it doesn't have to keep like fighting to get out of |
| 1:17.7 | the cocoon. |
| 1:19.4 | Unfortunately, instead of freeing the moth to be able to like fly off, the body of the |
| 1:25.4 | moth was oversized and the wings of the moth were shrunken and shriveled and unable to fly. |
... |
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