Devotion for today: redemptive suffering: uniting ourselves with Christ on the Cross

Last week we stood at the foot of the cross. This week we place ourselves upon it.

Scripture for meditation: Col 1:24

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church.

Christ tells us: John 15:13

“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

Dr. Brook Herbert, D.Th, explains redemptive suffering in this way: St. Paul writes in Colossians the mysterious words that often take us back (Col 1:24)…. Paul is not suggesting that the sacrifice of Christ on the cross is incomplete or in anyway dependent on any sacrifice Paul himself may offer on his own. Rather, Paul is alluding to the gift offered to all of us in Christ, which is the wondrous gift of participation with Christ in his “divine nature,” and this most profoundly perceived in Christ’s own redemptive suffering….Our own suffering becomes, in union with Christ, a redemptive oblation acceptable to God and ordered to his boundless desire to save his world, his cosmos, his own human creatures – the mirrors of his “image and likeness”…. In perfect obedience to his – our – Father, Jesus reveals this unbounded sacrificial love from the degradation of the Cross. Here we cannot fail to wonder at the glory into which our Lord invites us. If we dare to gaze on the Cross we see the contours of a man physically broken beyond recognition. He bears a visage of abject torment, bloody and drained of all semblance of human dignity and beauty. As the Host was elevated between heaven and earth the night before, on Good Friday we gaze upon a God suspended between earth and heaven on behalf of a dying world…. Here is the great paradox, for herein lies the hidden dimensions of authentic truth and beauty as the unimaginable and unfathomable intensity of redemption. The wonder and blessedness of heaven, the utter fruitfulness of salvation comes to us through suffering. Only here are we offered the opportunity to participate in the highest and most perfect expression of human love: love poured out for the eternal good of others. Our personal oblation of suffering, poured out and in union with Christ’s, floods the world locked in sin with goodness and grace. The fruitfulness of the Kingdom of God hangs on a Cross, and we are invited to share in the glorious potency of its transforming grace. Such is suffering human love and such is its power united to Divinity hidden within the One who dies first. (Homiletic & Pastoral Review, April 2011, Ignatius Press).

 Prayer: Dear Jesus, You showed the greatest love by giving Your life for our salvation. You left all the glory You had from the beginning and took on the form of a servant. You invited us to do the same: to be ready to live with and for each other, up to the end, as You did for us. Thank You for enabling us to love. Destroy selfishness, haughtiness, hatred, jealousy, and narrow-mindedness in us. Amen. (Fr. Slavko Barbaric, O.F.M., Pray With the Heart, Franciscan University Press, 1988)

My thoughts: Dr. Herbert paints a powerful picture of redemptive suffering. “…we gaze upon a God suspended between earth and heaven on behalf of a dying world.” Christ asks us to join Him on the Cross. Our suffering is not a waste of time, nor is it something to be feared. Rather, we are invited to look at suffering as an opportunity to join Christ in “…love poured out for the eternal good of others.” When we offer our suffering to God the Father, united with Christ His Son, we participate in, not just observe, Calvary. We become part of the cure for a world which Pope Benedict warned “…in many ways, is on the verge of collapse.”

Our prayer to God: This week, as we look at redemptive suffering, let us begin by offering to God all our humiliations, rejections, feelings of abandonment and sadness. Christ felt all of these as He hung on the Cross. May we unite our suffering with His, and pray, “Dear Jesus, never let me be separated from You again. Grant that I may love You always, and then do with me as You will.” (St. Alphonsus Liguori, Stations of the Cross).