Hi,
Who is more innocent and has suffered more than Jesus? Responding to His generous self-donation ought to be in the forefront of our minds every day. It is the very core of our faith and gives us perspective on everything.
What your friend is doing is setting herself up as God’s judge. This is because she began her thinking with herself. If she were God she wouldn’t allow such suffering—as if she sees the situation better that God does. How utterly naive! God is not just a bigger version of us. If He allows suffering, then this has to be the wisest of decisions. If we don’t understand this, it’s not because God’s intellect is wanting. It’s because ours are. When we begin with God, rather than ourselves, we don’t pass judgment on Him; we submit our judgment to His. As God, He knows a lot more than we do. He does a much better job of being God than we ever could.
All the pain that He allows us to endure whether in ourselves or in others, is there to help us grow in our love for Him and each other. This enables us to have a greater appreciation of Him in heaven—which it the greatest good for us! His plan is so glorious and so big that our minds and hearts aren’t big enough to take it all in while we are here. But focus on His Passion and marvel at what God was willing to do to give us a glimpse of how much greater his love is than we can fully grasp. See below:
Fr. Vincent Serpa, O.P.
Reflection on the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ +
The agony in the garden was really the agony in His mind. He suffered the passion in His mind before He suffered it in His body—to the point of actually affecting the latter by sweating blood. But from then on, it was His bodily suffering that affected His mental suffering.
At the base of all His suffering was the one thing that human beings dread the most: rejection. He was betrayed by Judas, denied by Peter and abandoned by all the rest of His Apostles; those He had hand picked as His closest intimates. He was most rejected by those who put Him to death. They not only wanted Him dead, they wanted Him to suffer. They not only considered Him to be worth nothing, they considered Him to be worth minus nothing! This significance was not lost on Him. He felt fully the rejection as each physical agony reminded Him.
So we thank Him for joining us on our human journey and actually choosing to experience what we fear the most.
We thank Him for enduring the arrest and the cruelty of the guards and the Sanhedrin. We thank Him for enduring the cruelty of Pilate who allowed Him to be executed rather than risk his own political ruin—and for the cruelty of Herod who wanted to be entertained by having Him work a miracle. We thank Him for all the time He spent satisfying their preoccupation with themselves, just delaying His ultimate death. We thank Him for the anxiety of that night in a cell.
The next morning He was brutally scourged with such intensity and violence that He became as an aged man in a matter of minutes. His multiple wounds bloodied His entire body. The loss of so much blood not only severely weakened Him; it also caused a severe, throbbing headache that remained with Him for the duration.
We thank Him for this and for the mockery He received when they put a purple cloth on His shoulders and pushed a crown of thorns down into His head which intensified His headache. They blindfolded Him and slapped Him, insisting that He ‘prophesy’ who had hit Him. They spat on Him and beat Him.
He stood at the praetorium in utter disgrace according to the attitude of the crowd—while in reality, He stood in utter glory: almighty God, being present to every person who has ever suffered rejection, joining them in their moment of pain. It was there that He was sentenced to death by crucifixion. Physically, He was utterly miserable. He revealed to St. Bernard that carrying the cross was His most painful agony. He was so weak, He could hardly walk. Nauseous and thirsty, He found the weight of the cross on His shoulder almost unbearable. It most likely dislocated His shoulder. It is not surprising that He fell down on the stone streets that were filthy with animal dung—with the cross on top of Him. And He got up each time.
It was only with the help of Simon of Cyrene that He made it to the top of Calvary. There they drove the nails into the carpal tunnels of His hands, causing pain throughout His upper body. The nail in His feet registered great pain through all the sensitive nerves there. When the cross was righted, His up-stretched arms squeezed His lungs and He began to pant for lack of oxygen. So He had to push down on His crucified feet to push His body up in order to fill His lungs with air. This took great effort because He was so weak. Yet He managed to maintain such effort for three hours of agony which increased gradually as He became weaker moment by moment. By the end of the third hour, His agony was at its peak
He had come to the point where His lack of strength simply was no match for what is known as Sepsis, where the bloodstream is overwhelmed by bacteria, and in this eternal moment He died, giving us His life. Transcending time, this moment of divine love is present to us in the tabernacles of the world. Thank you, Lord. We adore you O Christ and we praise you. By your holy cross, you have redeemed the world.
