Out of the Recesses of Suffering comes the Cross; Eternal Life!

Moved by so much suffering Christ not only allows himself to be touched by the sick, but he makes their miseries his own: “He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.” But he did not heal all the sick. His healings were signs of the coming of the Kingdom of God. They announced a more radical healing: the victory over sin and death through his Passover. On the cross Christ took away the “sin of the world,” of which illness is only a consequence. By his passion and death on the cross Christ has given a new meaning to suffering: it can henceforth configure us to him and unite us with his redemptive Passion. (CCC 1505).

The cup of the New Covenant, which Jesus anticipated when he offered himself at the Last Supper, is afterward accepted by him from the Father’s hands in his agony in the garden at Gethsemani, making himself “obedient unto death.” Jesus prays: “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me……”Thus he expresses the horror that death represented for his human nature. Like ours, it is perfectly exempt from sin, the cause of death. Above all, his human nature has been assumed by the divine person of the “Author of life,” the “Living One.” By accepting in his human will that the Father’s will be done, he accepts his death as redemptive, for “he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.” (CCC 612).

We can readily notice that without suffering Christ would not have found the Cross. Without the Cross none of us would ever be called forth to Eternal Life. This is why Jesus entered our world through his Incarnation, faced rejection throughout his ministry, and suffered the Crucifixion which in three days rose to the same life we all shall experience.

Belief in the resurrection of the dead has been an essential element of the Christian faith from its beginnings. “Thr confidence of Christians is the resurrection of the dead; believing this we live.” (CCC 991)

Jesus the Son of God, freely suffered death for us in complete and free submission to the will of God, his Father. By his death he has conquered death, and so opened the possibility to all men. (CCC 1019).

We may often hear people yelling at God when all of their prayers for healing never come. It can test our own belief regarding the non-healings from God. In the first paragraph we read that Jesus did not heal everybody. I along with other family members and friends sit and watch our loved one go into a deep sleep waiting for an angel to take them from their now dead vessel we call a human person. This person, our human being we love, has reached the Cross and been removed from their suffering.

Ralph B. Hathaway