Looking back, I realize that we did this for a few reasons. Certainly, we came to appreciate Shakespeare’s masterful use of language. We appreciated his ability to gain insight into human nature. Most importantly, though, studying those soliloquies gave us an insight into the stories themselves, into the character’s circumstances and motivations at that moment of the plot. Understanding the thoughts and feelings of those characters at a critical moment in the story helped us to understand better what would happen next.
In our Gospel today, we hear Jesus give voice to his inner thoughts and feelings. Like a Shakespearean character, he considers the circumstances of his coming Passion and Death and responds with the sentiments in his heart. Jesus, though, is more than a character; he also speaks with the authority of the Author, with the knowledge of God himself who has constructed the story. Like a good teacher, Jesus wants his students – his disciples – to understand more fully what is playing out before them, not on the page but in real life.
We might include ourselves also among the intended audience of Jesus’s words. It’s pretty rare in the Gospels to get a glimpse into the inner life of Jesus, but in John’s Gospel, these long addresses become more frequent the closer Jesus draws to the Passion. As his “hour” approaches, the tension in the story builds until the climax of the drama at last unfolds in the road to Calvary. Jesus does not want his disciples, nor us, to mistake what is truly happening – to miss the meaning of the story before us. As terrible as the sequence of Jesus’s Passion and Death is, it is also fully the will of Father, the love of God for humanity on display. As Jesus says, it is the purpose for which he has come into the world, the hour for which he was sent.
At times, we might ask ourselves, “Why did the Lord need to die? Was it necessary?” St. Thomas Aquinas responds to that question in a few ways which might be of help to us. He says that we should not think of the Lord’s suffering as necessary, in the sense that God was forced to make things that way, or as if Jesus himself had no choice in the matter. God is all powerful and could have chosen to accomplish our salvation in some other way; and Jesus had a truly free will and so could have rejected what his Father called him to. And yet this was always God’s plan; Christ’s suffering was necessary therefore in the sense that it most perfectly accomplished the redemption he desired to work for us. The word the Church Fathers use is “fitting” – the Passion and Death of Jesus fittingly show us both the true result of our sinfulness and also the total obedience that Christ shows to his Father out of love for humanity.
We would do well to keep these considerations in mind as we prepare to enter into Holy Week, with Palm Sunday one week from today. But I think they also can be helpful for us in approaching our own sufferings, our own invitations into sharing in the mystery of the Lord’s Cross. One of the great advantages of our faith is that the Lord has taught us how to understand our suffering, but too many Christians today seem to have forgotten what that lesson is or to have rejected its value. What we need perhaps is to study again the Lord’s own suffering as a lens through which we can view our own.
Notice in the Gospel today that Jesus has a certain heavy-heartedness as he looks ahead to the Passion. It is not that he goes to his death unwillingly; far from it. But he says that his heart is troubled, and understandably so. Jesus is in the prime of his life, not ill, not weakened, only some 33 years of age; to face an impending death seems almost impossible to believe. This sadness – at the necessity of dying, at the rejection he has encountered – does not, however, in any way diminish the resolve he has to fulfill the mission entrusted to him by the Father. He has trust in his Father’s will, and that through his act of obedient suffering “the ruler of this world [Satan] will be driven out.”
In our own lives, none of us likes to suffer, and rightfully so. Suffering always involves something bad; whether it is physical pain, or emotional distress, or the suffering of loss, in some way or another, we encounter something in suffering that we would rather avoid. Jesus shows that suffering can also be transformative. Remembering Christ on the Cross, we can unite our own sorrows to his, and so make them offerings to God as recompense for our sins. The suffering may be particularly challenging at times, but it is always only temporary. Like grains of wheat, we anticipate a future transformation, and we believe that what we endure here will allow us bear fruit for what awaits us. In the meantime, we embrace the various “deaths” that are the passageway to newness of life – death to our desires and our ambitions, death to our grievances and our hardness of heart, death to our attachments to things, and to people, and even to this earthly life. But suffering, and even death itself, do not have the final word; God has proven that in Christ as well.
Friends, soon we will celebrate again the most important mysteries of our faith, the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus. These events are the story of our salvation, something far deeper and richer than even Shakespeare, and thus they are worthy of our study and reflection. But they are also mysteries to be entered into, performed so to speak in our own lives. Jesus knows well the sorrows we face and the sufferings we endure, and he invites us to share in his Cross, so that we might have a share in the glory of his Resurrection. His words to us in the Gospel today teach us patience, inspire in us obedience, and most importantly encourage us in perseverance, so that at each moment we may seek to follow after him. May our own sufferings be for us a further step down the road of discipleship, closer to Calvary, but closer also to heaven, so that where he is, we may one day be.
In our Gospel today, we hear Jesus give voice to his inner thoughts and feelings. Like a Shakespearean character, he considers the circumstances of his coming Passion and Death and responds with the sentiments in his heart. Jesus, though, is more than a character; he also speaks with the authority of the Author, with the knowledge of God himself who has constructed the story. Like a good teacher, Jesus wants his students – his disciples – to understand more fully what is playing out before them, not on the page but in real life.
We might include ourselves also among the intended audience of Jesus’s words. It’s pretty rare in the Gospels to get a glimpse into the inner life of Jesus, but in John’s Gospel, these long addresses become more frequent the closer Jesus draws to the Passion. As his “hour” approaches, the tension in the story builds until the climax of the drama at last unfolds in the road to Calvary. Jesus does not want his disciples, nor us, to mistake what is truly happening – to miss the meaning of the story before us. As terrible as the sequence of Jesus’s Passion and Death is, it is also fully the will of Father, the love of God for humanity on display. As Jesus says, it is the purpose for which he has come into the world, the hour for which he was sent.
At times, we might ask ourselves, “Why did the Lord need to die? Was it necessary?” St. Thomas Aquinas responds to that question in a few ways which might be of help to us. He says that we should not think of the Lord’s suffering as necessary, in the sense that God was forced to make things that way, or as if Jesus himself had no choice in the matter. God is all powerful and could have chosen to accomplish our salvation in some other way; and Jesus had a truly free will and so could have rejected what his Father called him to. And yet this was always God’s plan; Christ’s suffering was necessary therefore in the sense that it most perfectly accomplished the redemption he desired to work for us. The word the Church Fathers use is “fitting” – the Passion and Death of Jesus fittingly show us both the true result of our sinfulness and also the total obedience that Christ shows to his Father out of love for humanity.
We would do well to keep these considerations in mind as we prepare to enter into Holy Week, with Palm Sunday one week from today. But I think they also can be helpful for us in approaching our own sufferings, our own invitations into sharing in the mystery of the Lord’s Cross. One of the great advantages of our faith is that the Lord has taught us how to understand our suffering, but too many Christians today seem to have forgotten what that lesson is or to have rejected its value. What we need perhaps is to study again the Lord’s own suffering as a lens through which we can view our own.
Notice in the Gospel today that Jesus has a certain heavy-heartedness as he looks ahead to the Passion. It is not that he goes to his death unwillingly; far from it. But he says that his heart is troubled, and understandably so. Jesus is in the prime of his life, not ill, not weakened, only some 33 years of age; to face an impending death seems almost impossible to believe. This sadness – at the necessity of dying, at the rejection he has encountered – does not, however, in any way diminish the resolve he has to fulfill the mission entrusted to him by the Father. He has trust in his Father’s will, and that through his act of obedient suffering “the ruler of this world [Satan] will be driven out.”
Anatoly Shumkin, The Humility of Christ (2013)
In our own lives, none of us likes to suffer, and rightfully so. Suffering always involves something bad; whether it is physical pain, or emotional distress, or the suffering of loss, in some way or another, we encounter something in suffering that we would rather avoid. Jesus shows that suffering can also be transformative. Remembering Christ on the Cross, we can unite our own sorrows to his, and so make them offerings to God as recompense for our sins. The suffering may be particularly challenging at times, but it is always only temporary. Like grains of wheat, we anticipate a future transformation, and we believe that what we endure here will allow us bear fruit for what awaits us. In the meantime, we embrace the various “deaths” that are the passageway to newness of life – death to our desires and our ambitions, death to our grievances and our hardness of heart, death to our attachments to things, and to people, and even to this earthly life. But suffering, and even death itself, do not have the final word; God has proven that in Christ as well.
Friends, soon we will celebrate again the most important mysteries of our faith, the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus. These events are the story of our salvation, something far deeper and richer than even Shakespeare, and thus they are worthy of our study and reflection. But they are also mysteries to be entered into, performed so to speak in our own lives. Jesus knows well the sorrows we face and the sufferings we endure, and he invites us to share in his Cross, so that we might have a share in the glory of his Resurrection. His words to us in the Gospel today teach us patience, inspire in us obedience, and most importantly encourage us in perseverance, so that at each moment we may seek to follow after him. May our own sufferings be for us a further step down the road of discipleship, closer to Calvary, but closer also to heaven, so that where he is, we may one day be.
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