How do we muster the strength to continue being concerned with the needs and suffering of others when we ourselves are in pain and in sorrow? Don’t we conveniently make our own suffering an excuse to be insensitive to others?
I used to bring Holy Communion to an old lady way back my seminary formation days. She had a son, her only child, who took care of her. For about two years, I visited her at home every Sunday after mass. She would gladly receive the Holy Communion. She was very sweet to me. One Christmas break, I missed to visit her for two Sundays as I was in vacation. During my absence, her only son died in an accident! So when I resumed my visit, I witnessed her grief and anger. Her characteristic sweetness was gone. She would wail and raise hell as I entered her house and she would blame God—the merciless God—for the tragedy. She refused to receive communion for several Sundays. She recovered later though.
When we are in pain we can be too self-absorbed to see the suffering of other people. Oftentimes, we call attention to ourselves and demand sympathy. Worse, sometimes, we are rendered paralyzed unable to move on with life. Some would just give up on life and others would persist in cynicism.
Drawing strength from our suffering. Jesus is in pain in today’s Gospel (Mt. 14: 13-21). When He heard of John’s death, “He withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself” (v. 13). Well, the passage is a plain and simple report of a seemingly negligible gesture of Jesus. It does not describe, for instance, how terrible Jesus feels.
While it does not explicitly say that Jesus is in grief due to a loss of a significant person in his life, the account, perhaps, leaves it to the reader who knows the relationship of John the Baptist to Jesus the Messiah to figure out how Jesus feels. His forerunner is dead. Beheaded! The person who paved the way for his mission is murdered brutally. Jesus must be in terrible sorrow. This may indeed explain his withdrawal to a deserted place.
In this Gospel episode, we learn from Jesus that we need to wrestle with our grief and to feel our pain and sorrow. However, we need not stay there. We should not allow our suffering to suck the life out of us. We’ve got to move on. Instead of sulking and blaming others and God for our suffering, we better come to grips with the situation and turn our suffering into our very strength to understand the pain of others.
Compassion is "suffering with" others. I believe here lies the secret of the compassion of Jesus—He knows by experience how it is to suffer... to be in pain... to lose someone dear... to feel the terrible anguish over some events that test our faith... to grapple with questions that shake our convictions. I would like to believe that Jesus, while in solitude, makes it a point to be in touch with his own pains, anguish, and disturbing questions. So that, when he disembarks from his isolation, he emerges as a person with a sensitive heart, one that easily sees the real suffering of the vast crowd, a heart that is easily moved with pity (v. 14). “Compassion” after all literally means “to suffer with.”
What are the significant forms of our own pain and suffering in life? What sort of persons have we become because of them? Have we turned into bitter persons or better ones? Have we become cynical, grouchy, and unproductive persons? Or Hopeful, tender, and compassionate?
Compassion calls for self-giving. Moreover, the rest of the gospel episode reveals that Jesus’ compassion spurs him on beyond plain emotional and sentimental identification with the suffering of people. He acts on what he sees and feels. He cures the sick and feeds the hungry, accordingly about five thousand men not counting the women and children (v. 14-20).
The event of the feeding of such a great number of hungry people tempts us to look at it easily through a miracle-worker understanding of Jesus. Jesus manages to feed all of them because of his capacity for miracles. Problem solved. However, another way of approaching the episode is to consider it as a sacramental catechesis (favored by more commentators). The feeding event points to the Eucharistic celebration as evidenced by the Eucharistic language--blessing... breaking... giving... (v. 19). Jesus offers himself in the symbol of the bread. He is the bread blessed, broken, and given for the sake of his people.
Jesus’ compassion is truly an act of “suffering with” his people. It is not some magical solutions that he offers to ease the people’s suffering. He does not believe in shortcuts. Shortcuts are the devil’s strategy that calls attention to oneself by a display of power. What Jesus offers is himself. His compassion urges him towards total self-giving. If the people are suffering, Jesus is right there with them suffering too as he empowers and gives hope by his sacrificial bestowal of self.
When we are in pain, we may do well to ask for the grace to draw from it the very strength we need to continue to be concerned about the suffering of people around us. And may we share in the compassion of Jesus, thus, helping us to muster the courage to be truly involved in giving hope to one another.
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