Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Today's Mass Readings

“Rising very early before dawn, he left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed.”

All of us can agree that mental anguish is a great human suffering. Loneliness, fear, doubt, betrayal, infidelity, depression—these are hard to take. We who follow Jesus seek to square such experiences with the goodness of God.

Job confronted this dilemma centuries ago. He began for us the journey into redemptive suffering—a journey which the all innocent One, Jesus Christ, would complete on the cross. Job insisted that suffering is not a simple equation of “I have sinned, so I have to suffer!” He realized there was more to it than that. The ways of the God he believed in, and prayed to, were deeper than his friends believed.

This great, painful mystery—of our implication in human suffering—is at the heart of what the Church does in Eucharist. In these Sacred Mysteries, we come to Jesus healing humanity: by taking upon Himself our sufferings. He begins with prayer: “Rising very early before dawn, he left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed.” As fully human, he could not have been oblivious to human suffering. Like us, he needed to process its meaning.

Jesus choose to undergo our human condition. He faced the meaning of innocent suffering.
A particularly painful example of this appeared in an article in the St. Joseph News Press Ga¬zette for Nov. 25, 1988. It was titled, “Misdiagnosed woman now helping the mentally ill.” The article was about a woman who lived in the Boston area. Her name was Marie Balter. Due to being misdiagnosed, she spent many years in the mental hospital. When she finally managed to get out she ended up by getting a position of authority over the mental hospitals. She wrote a book, Sing No Sad Songs.

More than a story about a person with a very strong constitution and a strong will to survive, it shows her very deep belief, a belief in seeing herself fitting into the mystery of suffering. Somehow, she knew there was a meaning for her in it.

Jesus came among us to heal but not to take away our freedom to take part in our healing. We are not a bunch of children waiting to be fed from the divine milk of instant solutions. Jesus calls us to grapple with the painful meaninglessness of life. In not accepting quick, easy solutions to deep conflicts we come to the real depth of our personhood in Christ!

Entry into this into this human dilemma is by way of prayer. Prayer is a very human activity. I suspect that in some sense it is the most human activity because trusting is the willingness to accept responsibility for oneself before the God of the universe.

Jesus grew in this human art of prayer. We can see this when he finally came to die. It was in the garden, at prayer, that we Him struggling to be free of the suffering that lay ahead. Once he entered that prayer and accepted what the Father had designed as the outcome of his human existence, in Roman-occupied Palestine at this time in His peoples’ history. Once He had accepted the Father’s will then the cross could be faced and He would conquer. For what Jesus had to conquer—not in himself but in us—is the will to make ourselves the center of existence.

The mystery of the cross is self-giving. That is precisely what is sacramentalized here in the Eucharist where we are before Christ’s blood “shed for you and for all.”

The healing of the world comes about, one person at a time. When I open to God’s grace to heal me, to relinquish myself as center of the world, then I can learn that the Christ-center which is far more wonder¬ful and exciting than I had imagined. To realize this, I have to pay attention, listen to God and pray!

Reflection by Fr. Xavier Nacke, OSB