April 15th, Divine Mercy Sunday
An All-important Distinction:
Christ Did Not Come Into this World To Suffer, But To Reveal The Father’s Love For Us
Prelude to This Reflection:
Two weeks ago I was at Mass while traveling in another part of our beautiful country. I was part of a congregation which filled the Church to the point of standing room only. It was Lent, and even that Sunday in Lent that traditionally we call “Passion Sunday”. But still I was not prepared for a homily that I can only characterize as fearsome – frightening even to the extent of morbid and menacing.
The preacher, with an intensity that stared down his congregation from an elevated pulpit, told the Catholic faithful assembled that Christ came into this world to suffer. And if we would be His disciples, we must embrace suffering too. We must “crucify all unholy thoughts and desires” and through fasting and penance wage war upon our sinful flesh. This was the Christian life, and were ready to drink from the chalice of Christ’s suffering?
A Response
Jesus did not come into this world to suffer! As God’s only Son become man, he was a person on a mission, a man driven by a dream of the Kingdom of God, a man sent into this world to bring humanity back home to the heart of God, a man determined to restore us and our world to that realm where God’s Love reigns supreme. If that mission involved cost, cross, crisis, and challenge, so be it. If that mission called Him to embrace on the Cross a Love like only God could love, then so be it.
But suffering was not His focus. You, me, all of us were His focus, the reason why He did all He did. We were His focus and He died with our names upon His lips. You, me, all of us were His focus as He died knowing that He had paid the price to bring us back home to the Father. In doing that He revealed on the Cross the fullness of the Father’s Love for us. To reveal that Love was at the heart and core of His mission, at the heart and core of the reason why He was sent into this world.
To say that Jesus came into this world to suffer is to completely misunderstand His focus. We were and are His focus, and this focus gave Him power – power to do whatever it would take to wrest us from the grip of Evil and restore us to the Father’s embrace.
It is so absurd to see Jesus’ focus as SUFFERING! My mother and father raised eight children. We children were their focus. Out of love they gave us home, food, clothing, shelter and warmth, protection from the evils of this world. If such a task and mission involved cost, cross, crisis, and challenge – and it did – then so be it! They paid whatever price necessary to be there for us.
But how absurd it would be to characterize my parents’ lives as a call to suffering. Rather, they saw their mission as a call to love their children and to pay whatever price necessary to provide for them.
My wife and I raised six children. We did the same. But never once did we view our lives as a call to suffering. It was a call to love. And we did whatever was necessary to love them, provide for them, and protect them.
So enough already to the preacher who, with menacing eyes, stared down his congregation and told them that “…Christ came into this world to suffer. And if we would be His disciples, we must embrace suffering too. We must crucify all unholy thoughts and desires and through fasting and penance wage war upon our sinful flesh.”
Give me a break! No wonder the congregation seemed repressed and devoid of all joy. With a weekly homily like that they would be in danger of mental illness.
I suppose there is something to be said for the good intention of the preacher, as well as for the good Catholic faithful who welcomed His message out of a holy desire to do God’s will. But please, don’t pass off to us such a warped message and sick focus as having anything to do with the authentic Gospel, or with that beautiful Christianity which once changed the world and can still do the same today.
A recommendation to that preacher would be to prayerfully read again the story of the “Prodigal Son” – also called the “Story of the Father’s Love”. If you want a correct focus while preaching on God’s Word, that’s the story which should guide your message to society today, and it is the Love of that story which should forever be our focus.
In Jesus' Love,
Doug +
