Each year on
Passion Sunday, we recall the last twelve hours of Jesus’ life. And,
although none of us most likely has been brutally tortured like Jesus
was tortured at the hands of the sadistic Romans legionnaires, all of us certainly can
appreciate the physical suffering Jesus endured as he embarked upon and
walked the winding uphill way to Golgotha.
This focus on Jesus’
suffering certainly helps us to understand all that Jesus endured at the
hands of his captors and to realize how most of our pains and suffering
pale in comparison to his. This focus also reminds us about our fear of
suffering and how hard we are willing to work to avoid suffering of any
kind. It has been said by some that our worst fear is that of
suffering. We just don’t want to suffer and we will do just about
anything to avoid it. And, we’ve
invented hundreds if not thousands of companies, like those in the
pharmaceutical industry, to alleviate suffering.
I had a friend, an
Augustinian priest, named Jim Warne. All who knew Jim experienced quite
a “character.” He was a real down-to-earth guy whose reputation
didn’t exceed him. Jim certainly liked to travel and party; he enjoyed
adult beverages, sometimes in copious amount; and, he smoked unfiltered
Camels by the carton. He was a real 1950s kind of guy. But, Jim was
also an engaging teacher, a compelling and passionate preacher, a
renowned retreat master, a compassionate confessor, and a dedicated
Knight of Columbus and Alhambra chaplain.
Like all of us, Jim
didn’t want to suffer, but that wasn’t to be. Diagnosed in the
mid-1990s with esophageal cancer, Jim decided, against his adamant
statement that he wouldn’t,
to undergo
extensive chemo and radiation therapy, all of which ultimately proved to
have no positive effect whatsoever on the disease.
The treatment,
however, wasn’t worse than the disease, although the suffering it caused Jim
made him double over for hours on end and incapable of walking
even the short distance down the hallway to the bathroom. The disease
proved to be worse than the treatment because it first robbed Jim of his
voice, rendering him incapable of two things he loved doing, teaching
and preaching. The disease then caused Jim to cough until he would turn
purple in the face and just about pass out because he couldn’t breathe.
It was awful to see him endure such pain and agony, awful enough that I felt
pain and agony just watching him endure this suffering.
Eventually, his condition it impossible for Jim to leave his room and enjoy
himself. Forget about traveling, going out to dinner with the guys, or
to a parishioner’s home or the home of a fellow Knight. Jim couldn’t
even play pinochle in the monastery common room, which we used to do
almost daily. Finally, the disease strangled Jim to death, robbing him
of life itself. All of this took only about six months.
Throughout his
period of suffering, Jim refused all pain-killing medications. On one
occasion when I had the audacity to suggest that he consider taking
morphine because his pain and suffering would intensify, Jim said,
“Listen kid, if Jesus could suffer all that he did, I can bear with
this.” Jim’s decision to embrace suffering was as matter of fact as
that. He oftentimes spoke about how he wanted his suffering to be
redemptive and, if not for him, he asserted, then perhaps for those he
had served during his 40+ years as an Augustinian priest and were in
need of God’s
grace.
None of us wants to
suffer, yet it is part-and-parcel of our existence as human beings.
Perhaps we fear suffering because it reminds us what inevitably will follow in its
wake…death.
As I read and
considered the Passion Narrative this year and thought about Jim Warne
and all of those other people I know personally who have embraced with
dignity and courage the difficult and painful suffering that has invited
itself into their lives, I believe our worst fear we have is not
suffering but, rather, being abandoned and left alone. Most of us will
do just about anything and everything we can do in order to avoid being
“dumped” and left feeling alone. All too often, we’re even willing to
cave in to unreasonable or unjust demands and to sacrifice our values.
Matthew’s
version of the Passion reinforces this notion when, after enduring what is
almost unimaginable pain and suffering, Jesus wondered whether
God had abandoned him. Crying aloud from the cross, Jesus asked: “Eli,
eli, lema sabachthani?”, that is, “My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?” Isn’t
that a horrible thought? Namely, gasping his last breath, what was
passing through Jesus’ mind was not just that his disciples had
abandoned him but also that God had also abandoned Jesus who had spent
his ministry solely in God’s service. Jesus felt completely and
absolutely abandoned.
But, in Luke’s
version of the Passion, Jesus last words were “Father, into your hands I
commend my spirit.” Luke seems to want to remind those who would
wish to be Jesus’ disciples
that, as people of faith, they are not to fear suffering, abandonment,
and loneliness but to embrace
them, not to run away from but to enter into these experiences,
confidently trusting in God alone as they yield their spirits to God’s
divine providence.
Such faith offers no guarantees; instead, it requires heroic and
confident trust that God will not abandon His children.
For example, we just
recalled Jesus’ experience of being abandoned and left alone. The
fickle crowd, wild-eyed with excitement and having just crowned Jesus
“King,” turned its back on their King a meager four days later. After
having just celebrated the Passover meal, Jesus’ disciples wouldn’t
stand watch with Jesus for just one hour while he prayed in the Garden
of Olives. Judas soon followed by betraying his friend, Jesus. And, if
that wasn’t enough, Peter proceeded to deny not only that he knew Jesus
but also that he had any relationship with Jesus whatsoever…not one time
but three times. Except for John—who stood beside Mary during the last
twelve hours of Jesus’ life—all of Jesus’ disciples went into hiding to
so they wouldn’t have to suffer. And yet, as Jesus embraced almost unimaginable pain and suffering
in addition to abandonment and loneliness, when he gasped his last
breath, Jesus cried aloud from the cross: “Father, into your hands I
commend my spirit.”
For those who have
experienced Mel Gibson’s, The Passion of the Christ, it’s hard
enough to conceive the immensity of Jesus’ suffering and death. But, as
difficult as people find it to experience that immense reality and,
instead, wince
and turn away when they do experience it, it’s almost impossible to conceive how,
hanging from the cross and when Jesus’ breathed his last, the thought he
expressed was his absolute willingness to yield his spirit to God, the
One Who seemed most absent in this horrific martyrdom.
In The Imitation
of Christ, Thomas à Kempis wrote:
Jesus today has many who
love his heavenly kingdom, but few who carry his cross; many for yearn
for comfort, few who long for distress….There are many who follow Jesus
as far as the breaking of bread, few as far as drinking the cup of
suffering; many who revere his miracles, few who follow him in the
indignity of the cross….
Suffering is one
thing. It’s painful and, yet somehow, we can learn to cope with it,
especially by offering our suffering up to God for the good of others.
But, the reality of being abandoned and left alone is something I
believe we dread much more than suffering, perhaps because we realize
that suffering is far less painful than the reality of being abandoned
and left alone by ourselves and with no one to share our experience and
to help us deal with it.
The
way of the Cross requires disciples, first, to embrace and not to run
from suffering—even if it is unjustly inflicted upon them as it was upon
Jesus—and, second, to face the reality that disciples also will be
abandoned and left alone, as Jesus was. The way of the Cross turns
everything upside down and forces Jesus’
disciples to contemplate how the wages of sin—the “I” in the word
“sin”—bring about suffering and not just they type of suffering that leads to
a physical death but also abandonment and loneliness. That is why
the way of the Cross also requires, third, abandoning one’s
spirit and entrusting it to God’s
divine providence.
Otherwise, the loss of hope and the emergence of despair will lead to
spiritual death as one concludes in the midst of suffering, abandonment,
loneliness, and death that even God will abandon
His children.
In closing his
thoughts about the need to take up the Cross, Thomas à Kempis asks his
readers:
Why, then, are you
afraid to take up your cross?….You see, the cross is the root of
everything; everything is based on our dying there. There is no other
road to life, to inner peace, but the road of the Cross, of dying daily
to self.
To be a disciple of
Jesus requires following him all the way to the Cross, not just the Cross of
surrendering one’s
body to God but also the Cross of yielding one’s spirit to God’s divine
providence,
full of confident trust that God
will never abandon His children.
What makes our experiences of suffering, abandonment, and loneliness
redemptive, then, is not how we stoically bear with the pain they cause us but
as we strive, just as Jesus did, to see God’s presence in the midst of these
tragic experiences, the consequence of sin.
Disciples, then, are people who confidently trust that God is already bringing about an unseen
good in the midst of evil, just as we recited in today’s Passion
Narrative in the instance of God’s beloved Son’s self-giving death on
the Cross. In the end, there can be no real, mature faith until a
disciple embraces suffering, abandonment, and loneliness and begins to
live in confident trust that God is present and demonstrates this by
yielding one’s
spirit to His divine providence.
Now, I know that today’s
short homily probably doesn’t uplift and inspire or make anyone “feel
good.” I intended it to be that way because today is Passion Sunday and
unless, like the prophet Isaiah in today’s first reading, we can all say
and truly mean it when we say it, “The Lord God is my help, therefore I am not
disgraced; I have set my face like flint, knowing that I shall not be
put to shame,” none of us has any reason to be uplifted and inspired or to
“feel good.” The simple truth is that, only as we embrace suffering,
abandonment, and loneliness and as we confidently trust in God by
abandoning our spirit to His divine providence as Jesus did, that our
deep desire to end suffering, abandonment, and loneliness will find its
fulfillment “in the resurrection of the dead and life in the world to
come. Amen.” |