Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J.
Tree of Life
The advice of St. Ignatius of Loyola, to help us appreciate Jesus’ suffering and death, is both perceptive and helpful: “[when I consider Jesus’] Passion, I should pay special attention to how the divinity hides itself so that Jesus seems so utterly human and helpless. I should make every effort to get inside the Passion, not just staying with external sufferings, but entering into the loneliness, the interior pain of rejection and feeling hated, all the anguish within Jesus.”/1/
What can and has been overemphasized are the “external sufferings” Jesus underwent. I am not saying we ought ignore or pay little attention to them. I follow St. Ignatius, who realized Jesus endured much more pain than strangers witnessing his crucifixion noticed, or that people like us, so far removed from Jesus’ time, place and culture, can notice.
We benefit more from “mak[ing] every effort to get inside the Passion, not just staying with external sufferings, but entering into the loneliness, the interior pain of rejection and feeling hated, all the anguish within Jesus.”
Such efforts do not speculate, romanticize or, worse, spiritualize Jesus’ passion. We get inside Jesus’ passion when we call to mind our own rejection, feeling hated and refusing to acknowledge our own weaknesses and limitations.
Precisely when we call to mind our own rejection, feeling hated and when we acknowledge our own weaknesses and limitations we are in touch with Jesus and his passion. Moreover, sufferings that mark our inmost selves affect our physiques as well. Our bodies reflect our inmost selves. That allows us to appreciate St. Paul’s conviction, I bear the marks of Jesus on my body./2/Not only did St. Paul reflect on Jesus from his personal experience, his body was marked by his apostolic efforts: proclaiming Jesus as crucified Messiah was not only tiring it got him stoned, flogged, abandoned and maligned. For him those were not misfortunes or hurdles to overcome as much as they marked him as belonging to Jesus. He wore the body of his Lord. Paul was crucified to Jesus.
While we find it difficult to imagine crucifixion, other forms of state-sanctioned killing persist. I don’t know if hanging remains on the books in any state. Most states now opt against electrocution. The favored method is, ironically, anti-septic: lethal injection. That irony lays bare how we insulate ourselves against others’ suffering. Think of it: we blame victims when juries find no one guilty; we soon forget the guilty once they are incarcerated. The sufferings of guilty and innocent people alike mark them, change the contours of their physical presence and affect the ways they are in the world.
What we miss when we gloss over others’ suffering or when we deny our own is that we are being put to the test, as Jesus closed his prayer, which he gave us as our perfect prayer. Luke’s memory of Jesus’ prayer helps us pray the Lord’s Prayer. Put to the test is not some moral or psychological temptation. “It is a cataclysmic trial in which [an] individual’s entire vocation and faith is tested.”/3/
Cataclysmic trials are prevalent today. “Manifestations of this cataclysmic test in the modern world include victims of violence, the physically or mentally disabled, persons suffer-ing the harsh effects of aging, the unemployed and underemployed, victims of tragic accidents, and persons impeded from fulfilling their vocations in various ways.” These trials and others test “our entire calling and vision of life.”/4/ Intense suffering often is interior.
This intimate connection of suffering and life is part of faith. “[Christian] faith helps [those]... who feel and experience pain [and anxiety]...to grasp more deeply the mystery of suffering and to bear their pain with greater courage.”/5/
Bearing pain isn’t the ultimate goal. Surrendering to the One who will restore, whole and entire, the divine image in whom each is created is the goal and our Christian hope./6/ Though we can’t do that ourselves, we have Jesus, our high priest, who transformed his cross by his death, giving it to us as our Tree of Life. We, too, “wear the body of our Lord.”/7/
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/1/ Spiritual Exercises 195-197, paraphrase of David L. Fleming, S.J.
/2/ Galatians 6.17.
/3/ Karl A. Schultz, Where Is God When You Need Him? (New York: Alba House, 1991), p118.
/4/ Ibid., p119.
/5/ Pastoral Care of the Sick, General Introduction, 1.
/6/ Cf. The Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et spes, 18.
/7/ “Tree of Life,” words and music by Marty Haugen, Anthology I: 1980-1984, (Chicago: GIA Publications, Inc., 1997), Track 13.
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Wiki-image of Jouvenet's descent from the cross is in the public domain.
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