Suffer with Jesus
The suffering of Christ, lovingly accepted as an expression of the Father’s will, has generated a supreme good: the Redemption of the world. And, although it is true that this good is infinite and no man can add anything to it, yet Jesus Christ has wanted to leave his own redemptive pain open to any human suffering, with the condition that it be assumed with love.
This Redemption, at the same time complete and always open, introduces us to the essential mystery of the Church, the Body of Christ. It is the framework and space where It completes what is lacking in the sufferings of the Lord, as Paul says. We are members of a special society in which we jointly win and lose in common. This society is like a body that has many members but all together they form a unit.
But there is much more. Paul says: “If one member suffers, all the other members suffer with him. Here’s the thing; If you injure your little toe’s fingernail it is possible for the fever to take over the entire body, all the limbs suffer the consequences. Why does the knee have to suffer the consequences of the little toe? Because we win together, and we lose together. Little toe loose; all other members loose. The toenail healed; all the limbs healed.
Likewise, there is in the Body of the Church an intercommunication of gains and losses, of grace and sin. Given this mystery, you cannot ask: “Why do I have to suffer the consequences of the sins of a drug addict or a scammer from another country? What do I have to do with them? Yes, and I have a lot to do with it because, all the baptized of the world we are mysteriously interconnected. If you win, the entire Church wins; Yeah, you lose, the whole Church loses.
This doctrine is a continuation, expansion and perfection of that intuition of the prophet Isaiah about the servant of Yahweh, a captivating and suffering figure, about whose shoulders the Lord carried all our crimes. He was injured for the crimes of his people, was a victim of our excesses and the deviations of men caused His martyrdom. In short, the servant is suffering for others, he has taken the place of the sinners and has assumed the suffering that should have fallen on them; His scars have healed us. The servant descended, silent, into the abyss of death because He was atoning for the sins of others.
Based on this backdrop, early catechesis interpreted the event of Calvary. Hidden among the most arcane folds of the human heart beats a vocation of solidarity, instinctive and connatural, towards suffering humanity and sinful
This panorama offers the suffering Christian flashes of light, guidance clues, open horizons and, above all, a luminous path for your daily life. In truth since, we can say that the pain has been conquered or, at least, has lost its most fearsome sting: meaninglessness.
I am sure that countless servants of Yahweh live among us today. who are suffering for others and who collaborate with Christ in the Redemption of the world. Just as the primitive community found no other explanation for the disaster of Calvary, neither do we find another logic that explains the passion and death of so many people today but the mysterious figure of the servant of Yahweh who takes upon himself the sufferings of others and suffers for others. I have seen, and I still see, countless times, how the mystery of the servant is repeated and lived daily by mourners who suffers for others.
Taken from the book: “The art of being happy” chapter VI section: “Suffering with Jesus” by Father Ignacio
