topleft05.jpg (18208 bytes)HOMILY
 Passion Sunday (C)
04 April 04


 

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.”

 

 

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