A Homily for the Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings: Isaiah 50:5-9a James 2:14-18 Mark 8:27-35
What can you say about suffering that makes it better? If “better” means an end to suffering, let’s be honest: nothing.
Suffering, in the sense of adversity, is written into nature. Plants do not receive enough moisture. Animals consume other animals. We humans grow old and die, or disease prohibits even that. To be created, to be contingent means to suffer adversity.
And when one adds consciousness to adversity, at whatever level, you introduce pain. Withered plants feel no pain, but animals do. Pain is written into the nature of what it means to be conscious.
Finally, there is suffering as we know it, human suffering. Because we are constantly seeking something of the future, something we do not yet possess, adversity produces not only the pain of animals but also the anguish of souls. We cannot help but to ask why suffering has come, where it will end, what it means for the future.
This is where words come into their own. They cannot cancel adversity or remove physical pain, but they can help us to see suffering as a part of the journey we call life. Spiritual anguish is born of fear and confusion. Insight can allay fear if it produces understanding.
The Gospel of St. Mark reaches a first-act climax when Jesus, the Word made flesh, announces that he must suffer and die. Before this moment he has worked one wonder after another, establishing himself as God’s power, God’s presence, among us.
Now St. Mark brilliantly couples two opposites. Jesus is correctly identified by Peter as the Christ, the anointed one of God, the one charged with setting the world to right. But then Jesus makes an announcement that cannot make sense to his hearers, something the Christ simply should not say:
He began to teach them
that the Son of Man must suffer greatly (Mk 8:31).
“Son of Man” is the appellation applied to the apocalyptic avenger of the Book of Daniel. It is a great title for Christ, but how can this one suffer? And Jesus says not only that he will suffer but that he must suffer. The word δεῖ (dei) means “it is necessary.” The Greek text leaves no ambiguity. Unpolished by translation it reads: “It is necessary for the Son of Man many things to suffer.” Christ’s suffering and death are not accidents of history. They are both ordained by God.
Are we back to battling a monstrous God, one who is either too weak or too malevolent to prevent the suffering of Jesus?
A wise woman of the 16th century can calm our souls on that point, though indeed what she says initially seems every bit as troubling. The Carmelite mystic and doctor of the church, St. Teresa of Ávila, wrote in her biography:
I desire to suffer, Lord, since You suffered. Let Your Will be done in me in every way, and may it not please Your majesty that something as precious as Your love be given to anyone who serves you only for the sake of consolation (Life, 11:12)
“I desire to suffer, Lord, since you suffered.” This is not masochism. No, it is solidarity born of love. No one should seek suffering—either as adversity, pain or anguish—for itself. But many of us freely embrace it when someone we love suffers. We simply will not allow those whom we love to suffer alone.
We cannot banish adversity or still the pain, but we can lessen anguish when we accompany another. Think of a parent, anxiously pacing in an emergency room. Think of the child now grown, holding that parent’s hand as the last breath is drawn. Though spiritual anguish is unique and unrepeatable, it can be shared.
Teresa loves a “man of sorrows.” She loves Jesus. Jesus suffers, so Teresa must as well. It is the nature of love to choose solidarity over suffering. We see this pattern repeatedly even in our wounded humanity. Love responds to suffering with solidarity.
Now, if you know the heart of Teresa, you know the heart of her God, whether we speak of Father, Son or Holy Spirit. God suffers with us.
Deprivation and pain are written into nature. The great religious insight is that spiritual anguish is not. Although its ubiquity is undeniable, we somehow sense, without real evidence, that this is not how life was meant to be, that it is not the will of God. God does not will, cannot will, that hearts should be broken.
Spiritual suffering is the fruit of sin, a consequence of our decisions for self rather than for God. God will not remove what we create. After all, who can say where we end and our creations begin? But this does not mean that God must countenance what we sinfully create.
In the Incarnation of the Christ, God, who cannot know necessity, nonetheless embraces it. “The Son of Man must suffer greatly.” He must do so because those whom he loves are suffering. The law of love overwrites the laws of nature. Deprivation and pain but most of all anguish are embraced so that love might lessen and ultimately contain suffering.
“I desire to suffer, Lord, since you suffered.” That’s what Teresa said. “I desire to suffer since you suffer.” That’s what the man she loved said as well. That is what he says to us.
