Good Friday: It’s hard to look at suffering

It’s hard to look at suffering.  It’s a natural inclination to turn our heads, to shut our eyes, to avert our gaze.  In doing so, we can hide behind ignorance:  if we don’t see it, then it’s not happening.  If it’s not happening, then we don’t have to do anything about it.  

But if we dare to look at suffering, we find that it leaves us baffled at what is before us, befuddled at what to do, bewildered into silence.  We can go on living, but aware of the suffering, our familiar world is suddenly unbalanced.

It’s hard to look at suffering; the Prophet Isaiah knew that.  He spoke of how difficult it was to look at the Suffering Servant, “so marred was he beyond human semblance; there was in him no stately bearing to make us look at him; a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity, one of those from whom people hide their faces.”

It’s hard to look at suffering. It shouldn’t be easy to look at the effects of war, violence, hatred, poverty.  It shouldn’t be easy to look at the hungry, the homeless, the ill in mind, body, or spirit.  It shouldn’t be easy to look at lives broken by abuse, infidelity, or hurtful teasing.  It shouldn’t be easy, and it must be done, for it is in looking at suffering that hearts are broken open, passivity dies, and hope is born.  

It is hard to look at suffering; and yet, here we are on this Good Friday when our attention is utterly focused on the suffering of Christ.  How is it that the cross, an instrument of torture and execution, has become the primary symbol of our faith?  How is it that we venerate this instrument of suffering?  Why is it when someone is initiated into the faith community that we claim them first with the sign of the cross?  How is it that we mark ourselves with it every time we pray? 

So many questions surround it, and yet there can only be one answer:  we come to stand before the suffering of Christ on the cross because we know that in Christ’s crucifixion, our God has completely united his life with our own.  Our God suffers for us and with us!  And because of God’s willingness to be completely emptied and share in our humanity – even to the point of suffering – we now have a share in God’s divinity.  

In and through the cross of Christ, we come to participate in the life of God.  In and through suffering, we become one with God as God becomes one with us.  How is it that on this day we come together to celebrate the suffering of Christ?  It remains an absolute mystery (that smacks of foolishness as St. Paul said), and yet we know it to be a source of healing and of hope for us, we know it to be a place, which leads us to union and oneness with our God.

It’s hard to look at suffering; it’s even harder to enter into it for ourselves and with others.  Yet, that is the call of the disciple for our Lord and Master has said to us, “What I have done for you, so you must also do for others.”  For us to enter into the suffering of one another is to enter into a share in the pain and glory of God.

We are invited to look upon those who are “crucified” this day – by the pain of anger, fear, and brokenness; because of religion, ethnicity, and sexuality; in their illness, loneliness, and abandonment – and see in them the face of Christ.  We may be rendered helpless in not being able to alleviate the pain, but those who suffer may be rendered hopeful knowing they are not alone.  Such is the invitation of our baptism, of our life in God.

Our God has shown us the way.  Our task is to look at suffering and pick up the cross – in courage and confidence – and follow him on the way of healing and hope, to oneness and unity, and ultimately to fullness of life in the heart of God.