Holy week begins, and it is the holiest week of the year. This week brings us into the heart of the mystery of suffering. A mystery, in theology, is something that is knowable or intelligible, but it is inexhaustible. It is infinitely knowable, which means it can be understood more and more, but without end. And the reason that suffering is a mystery is that God, who is the unutterable mystery, joined a human nature to himself and in doing so entered into human suffering. He joined us in our suffering, out of love for us; for if we truly love someone, we do not allow them to suffer alone. Their suffering causes us great sorrow, and so we long to join them in their suffering. And our suffering causes God a sorrow that is greater than we can possibly conceive - for God is Love -, and this sorrow is visible in the life of Christ, who is the Word of the Father, who is everything that the Father can say about himself. This divine sorrow is visible in his passion and death. Christ came to enter into human suffering so that we may always find him in the midst of our own darkness. And we do find him, if we look for him there. Even if we don't find him there at the time of our deepest suffering, we will see him in retrospect, if we look hard enough.
I have been through some difficult times in my own life, as have you all. Many of you have endured worse than I have, but I've had my share of situations that were unjust and frustrating, and they gave rise to a justified anger. I had no explanation for it at the time, however, the anger was there and it was real. But one Sunday after Mass, I was approached by an older man who wanted to talk, and this was a man who suffered far more than I did, and had been carrying so much more anger than I had been carrying. I soon realized that if I had not been suffering as I was at the time and had not the wounds from which that anger arose in me, I would not have been able to listen to him, to hear him, to understand him. I would not have been able to connect with him, and he would have been left in his sorrow, to endure it by himself, because he would know at the deepest level that I was not there with him in his own suffering. But I was there with him to some extent, because I had experienced something similar. And because he was heard, because he was understood, he experienced a degree of healing. You could say my wounds helped bring him healing, even though his suffering and wounds were greater than mine.
And that's what St. Peter meant when he wrote: "By his wounds we have been healed". Christ's wounds heal us. If our wounds help to heal others, it is only because they are a sharing in his wounds. He knows our suffering because he's endured worse, and he is God, and God is not supposed to suffer. But he does. And he chose to suffer with us and in us, imparting to our suffering life-giving power. We never suffer alone, and we will discover, if we have not already, that we have never suffered alone. Suffering and even death will not have the final word over your life or my life, because Christ entered into it and he rose from the dead. At the end of our sufferings will be the fullness of eternal life, and an eternal friendship with him who loved us so much that he drew close to us.