A young newly ordained
priest was assigned by his superior as the chaplain of a large Catholic high
school. The priest, enthusiastic and
engaging, was very endeared by the students.
He was so well liked, that the parents of the students would call him,
instead of the local parish priest, for all of their pastoral needs, including
sick calls to the local hospitals and funerals.
One of Father’s closest
friends at the high school was a doctor who taught mathematics in the morning
and worked at his medical practice after school hours. The doctor, so immersed in human suffering,
noticed that the young priest was becoming overwhelmed by the numerous sick
calls and funerals that were becoming part of his ministry.
One day, as the priest
was rushing off to take care of the dying grandmother of one his students, the
doctor yelled out to him, “Father, let them suffer.” Astonished, the priest stopped, and went back
to his office. “What do you mean?” asked
the priest. “Suffering is a part of
life. People need to experience
suffering. Don’t take that away from
them,” the teacher affirmed.
In this Sunday’s Old
Testament reading, Job struggles with the meaning of suffering. “Is not man’s life on earth a drudgery? Are not his days those of hirelings? He is a slave who longs for the shade, a
hireling who waits for his wages” (Job 7: 1- 2).
Only with Jesus, the
fulfillment of the Old Testament, can the human person find meaning in
suffering.
“As a result of
Christ's salvific work, man exists on earth with the hope of eternal
life and holiness. And even though the victory over sin and death achieved by
Christ in his Cross and Resurrection does not abolish temporal suffering from
human life, nor free from suffering the whole historical dimension of human
existence, it nevertheless throws a new light upon this dimension and
upon every suffering: the light of salvation” (Blessed Pope John Paul II, Salvifici Dolores, 15).
Jesus does not
take away human suffering; rather he transforms it and gives it new
meaning.
In his book Compassion, Henri Nouwen, no stranger to
sorrow and pain, expresses this idea
with these words: “The mystery of God’s
love is not that our pain is taken away, but that God first wants to share that
pain with us. Out of this divine
solidarity comes new life. Jesus’ being
moved in the center of his being by human pain is indeed a movement toward new
life. God is our God, the God of the
living. In the divine womb of God, life
is always born again. The great mystery
is not the cures, but the infinite compassion which is their source” (page
16).
In this Sunday’s
gospel passage, Jesus immerses himself into the world of human suffering. “When
it was evening, after sunset, they brought to him all were ill or possessed by
demons” (Mark 1: 32).
“Christ drew close
above all to the world of human suffering through the fact of having taken this
suffering upon his very self. During his public activity, he experienced
not only fatigue, homelessness, misunderstanding even on the part of those
closest to him, but, more than anything, he became progressively more isolated,
encircled by hostility and the preparations being made for putting him to
death. Christ was aware of this, and often spoke to his disciples of the
sufferings and death that await him, ‘Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and
the Son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes,
and they will condemn him to death and deliver him to the Gentiles; and they
will mock him, and spit upon him, and scourge him, and kill him; and after
three days he will rise.’
Christ goes toward
his Passion and death fully aware that his mission would be fulfilled in
precisely this way. Precisely by means of this suffering he must bring
it about ‘that man should not perish, but have eternal life.’ Precisely by means of his Cross, he must
strike at the roots of evil, planted in the history of man and in human souls.
Precisely by means of his Cross, he must accomplish the work of salvation. This
work, in the plan of eternal Love, has a redemptive character” (Blessed Pope
John Paul II, Salvifici Dolores, 16).
The second reading
from this Sunday’s liturgy reminds us that we carry out the apostolate of Jesus
Christ by immersing ourselves into the world of human need. “To the
weak I became weak, to win over the weak.
I have become all things to all, to save at least some” (1
Corinthians 9: 22).
The Italian
photographer Arturo Mari was the Vatican photographer during the entire
twenty-seven year pontificate of Blessed Pope John Paul II. At any Vatican function and all of his
apostolic journeys around the world, Mari was always present with his
camera.
During his 1984
apostolic journey to Korea, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Thailand,
Blessed Pope John Paul II visited the Sorokdo Leprosarium on May 4, 1984. Arturo Mari testifies that “he
touched them with his hands, caressed them, kissed each one. Eight
hundred lepers, one by one. One by one!”
The audio podcast of this homily will be posted on Sunday afternoon.
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