Suffering is quite naturally the least appealing part of human experience. Suffering isn’t just pain, it isn’t just a physical experience, it isn’t just sadness. Suffering applies to every way we are deprived of what is good. Sin is suffering because by choosing what seems to be good over what is really good, we deprive ourselves. Jesus takes all forms of human suffering upon Himself so that we may never find ourselves alone when we suffer. Jesus even takes upon Himself the suffering due to sin – though He Himself never sinned. He allowed Himself to be condemned and punished as a criminal, as a sacrifice – the Innocent One – so that we sinners might find refuge in Him. The One who was without sin became sin so that He might destroy it once and for all in His flesh. His body, broken on the Cross, is the image of our broken soul – broken by sin and suffering. The divinity of Christ – a sure support and powerful force of healing – carries the brokenness and weakness of Christ’s flesh all the way through His death to the Resurrection.
Wednesday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time
I’ve often heard the reason Jesus named James and John “Sons of Thunder” as having to do with their asking Him to send down fire from heaven to consume the town of unbelievers. I thought it was a humbling compliment, but one they deserved – a light but poignant way to emphasize that though occasionally misplaced, their fervor was remarkable. I was delighted to read in Bede the Venerable’s commentary today a slightly different take. The Sons of Thunder were so named because they heard the voice of the Father on the Mount of Transfiguration. The voice of the Father like thunder, their hearts moved definitively from the static complacency of a life that sees its completion on earth. We can perceive that John’s life was intensely altered by the Word made flesh, the Lamb of God, the Beloved Son, Jesus. John’s conversion to Jesus comes from a Word and a Voice that deeply uprooted his heart. I wonder if the fervor of the first Apostle to be martyred, James, wasn’t like the echo of the heartbeat of his brother John. John’s fervor was so contagious he clearly infected both St. Peter and St. Paul. Perhaps we could say that John loved his brother James so much that Jesus couldn’t refuse James the same graces as his brother.