If there is a common mysterious element in our lives, it is suffering. We all want to avoid it, but, sooner or later, we all experience suffering. It comes in many forms: from a simple headache that can disrupt our simplest daily activities to the heartache for a son making unwise choices; from a failure on the job to an automobile accident that takes the life of a close friend or relative; from the humiliation of a failing grade at school, to the anguish produced by war, terrorism and natural disasters.
We often feel powerless in the face of suffering. Even those who are close to us and who love us may be unable to help us find a solution; and yet it can, at times, be enough for someone to share it with us, perhaps in silence.
This is what Jesus did. He drew close to every man and every woman to the extent of sharing everything that regards us. Even more: he took upon his shoulders all our pain and suffering, making it his own, to the point of crying out:
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The crucifix from the newly inaugurated
church in Loppiano, Italy,
dedicated to
the Mother of God. |
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“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
It was three o’clock in the afternoon when Jesus let out this cry towards heaven. For three long hours he hung, nailed hands and feet to the cross.
He had lived his brief life in one continuous act of self-giving: he healed the sick and raised the dead, he multiplied the loaves of bread and forgave sinners, and he spoke words of wisdom and of life.
While yet on the cross, he forgave those who crucified him, he opened the gates of heaven to the good thief, and then gave his body and blood for us, after having already given it to us in the Eucharist. In the end, he cried out:
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
But Jesus did not let himself be overcome by suffering; rather, through a kind of divine alchemy, he transformed suffering into love, into life. In fact, at the very moment when he seemed to experience an infinite distance from the Father, he made an enormous and incredible effort to believe in his love and to abandon himself to God totally: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Lk 23:46).
In re-establishing unity between heaven and earth, Jesus opened for us the gates to the Kingdom of God; he gave us full status as children of God and made us brothers and sisters to one another.
It is the mystery of death and of life that we celebrate during these days of Easter, of resurrection.
It is the same mystery that Mary, the first disciple of Jesus, fully experienced. At the foot of the cross she, too, was called “to lose” what she held most dear, her son, God. But in that moment, precisely because she accepted God’s plan, she became the Mother of many children, our Mother.
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Through his infinite suffering, the price of our redemption, Jesus made himself one with us in all things, taking onto himself our fatigue, our disappointments, our moments of confusion, and our failures, and he did this to teach us how to live.
Since he took on all these sufferings (human pain), all the divisions and trauma of humanity, I can say that wherever I see suffering, in myself or in my brothers and sisters, I see Jesus. Every physical, mental, or spiritual suffering reminds me of him; each carries his presence, each discloses one of the countenances of his suffering.
Then I am able to say: “In this suffering, I can love you, Jesus Forsaken. By making my suffering your own, you come to visit me. And so I want you, I embrace you!”
If we then swiftly move on and start to love, to respond to his grace, to want what God wants in the next present moment, to live for him, we will often find that the suffering disappears. This is because love calls forth the gifts of the Spirit: joy, light, and peace.
The Risen Lord shines in us.
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