Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

All of us can agree, I’m sure, that mental anguish is a very great human suffering. Loneliness, fear, doubt, betrayal, infidelity, and especially depression and mental illness are hard to take. Job confronted this dilemma centuries ago. He didn’t solve the problem but he began the journey into redemptive suffering — a journey which the all innocent One, Jesus Christ, would complete on the cross. Job insisted, against his friends, that suffering is not a simple equation of “I have sinned, so I have to suffer because of my sin!” Job knew somehow, God’s mysterious ways were wider and deeper than his friends were making it. The innocent suffer, and Job knew it.

This painful mystery is addressed in the Holy Eucharist, the sacrament of Jesus’ redemptive offering to his Father. In this sacrament, he brings a new patience into the world!

In today’s Gospel we heard: Rising very early before dawn, he left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed. As humans, one of the things Jesus needed to do is process the meaning of the suffering. He did not choose to be an all-powerful superman who brushed it aside. He entered our condition. He chose to struggle with the meaning of innocent suffering. “In the days when he was in the flesh, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.” Heb.5:7

A particularly painful example of suffering appeared in a newspaper article in November 1988. It was titled, “Misdiagnosed woman now helping the mentally ill.” A woman named Marie Balter who lived in the Boston area spent many years in a mental hospital due to being misdiagnosed. When she finally managed to get out she came into a position of authority over the mental hospitals. She wrote a book, Sing No Sad Songs.

The story was not just about a person who had a very strong constitution and will to survive! It also showed she had a very deep belief, a belief about how she saw herself fitting into the mystery of suffering – somehow, she knew there was a meaning to it.

Jesus came among us to heal. But he did not come among us to take away our freedom to take part in healing. We are not a bunch of children waiting to be fed from the divine milk of instant solutions. Jesus invites us to follow him in grappling with the apparent meaninglessness of life, not accepting quick and easy solutions to what are deep conflicts that we must come to terms with.

Jesus entered into the human dilemma through the quite-human activity of prayer. Prayer is a most human activity because trust is at the heart of what prayer is all about. It’s about growing in a willingness to trust in God.

Participating in our humanity, Jesus grew in this human art. We see it well when he came to die. It was in the garden, at prayer, that he struggled to be free of the suffering that lay ahead. Once he had entered that prayer, and once he had accepted what the Father set as the outcome of living this particular, human existence, in Roman-occupied Palestine of his peoples’ history; once He had accepted these, then he could face the cross and conquer. For what Jesus had to conquer not in himself but in us is the will to be God.

The heart of the cross is the mystery of redemptive love. This is precisely the sacrament the Church offers in the Eucharist where Christ’s blood “will be shed for you and for all.”

Reflection by Fr. Xavier Nacke, OSB