Why All This Suffering…,?

It isn’t the way we would plan it: the suffering of war, of political disagreement, of hurt people in the Church, the suffering of children, sickness. No, surely the human race can be redeemed another way. Surely we can be saved without all this suffering, can’t we?

We are in the midst of Lent, the season that faces us with the outlandish fact that the Word of God, in the New Covenant of our flesh, reveals to us that, no, the best way is the way of the cross. Now why would God plan it this way? We are not going to presume that we know the Mind of God, but we are going to get hints.

Check it out. The all-powerful Word of God getting slapped in the face. He does nothing, except stand there in the greatest dignity, when with one glance he could destroy them all. What is he trying to tell us? If Christ Jesus is “the image of the invisible God” then we are seeing a love so powerful that it refuses to be a victim and to victimize anyone else by passing the violence on. It ends with him. He absorbs it. The love swallows the evil of his enemies. That love will engulf any hell they can dish out. He forgives, and the love includes even his executioners.

Now if this were all, it would be remarkable enough, and a challenge we see replicated in our martyrs. But it doesn’t stop there. This love turns the manure of this evil into radiant new life.

So what does the cross reveal? It tells us, who are his very own by baptism, that so it shall be for any suffering that attempts to make a victim out of us. Not a punishment, not merely an atonement, the cross reveals to us the very heart of God as loving mercy. More, our suffering is to be the very stuff of glory.

If we become the victim and then victimize others by blame and judgment, then evil spreads like some plague. The challenge to us is to absorb and refuse to pass it on, to short circuit it. Not some stoic repression, mind you, but intentional and deliberate forgiveness and inclusion, no child’s play. I don’t know about you, but I’ve only begun to think about what this might mean…

Really?

Is that what you’re up to?

Do I have the love to do this?

No, if I’m honest.

But you do – and you’ve joined me to Yourself.

So show me how it works when I’m in pain…

When I’ve hurt others, and they’ve hurt me.

When I listen to the news and get so mad I could spit.

Really?

If enough of us get good at this we might just change the world.