“I am so afraid to die,” she told me,
and with that, Lucy began to weep uncontrollably. Between sobs she went on: “And it isn’t fair. I’m too young to die. I have so many plans, so many things I still
want to do.”
I had only met her ten minutes before. On my way to a soccer game, I decided to stop
off to meet the new hospice patient I had just been assigned. You see, I was doing a summer internship in
hospice chaplaincy, and Lucy (not her real name) was to be my last patient for
the summer. Unlike so many of the others
in hospice, Lucy was completely lucid, completely aware of what was happening
to her, and at 60 or so years of age, she wasn’t a whole lot older than I. In the final stages of Lou Gehrig’s disease,
she could only move her head and arms and still breathe on her own, but she
knew that even those abilities were soon to fail.
As she broke down weeping, I felt
powerless to help her, to calm her fears.
I said a quick prayer, asking for words to help her. And they came to me - the only words that
could possibly calm her fears – the name of Jesus Christ, Our Lord. I told Lucy that more than any person who
ever lived, Jesus can understand exactly what she was going through. Lucy was staring a horrible death in the
face, one in which she would slowly die from asphyxiation as her breathing
muscles weakened. And Our Blessed Lord,
nailed to the cross, likely died a slow, horrible death from asphyxiation as
well.
You see, I’m not so good with answers
about WHY God permits suffering to happen to each of us, but I find great
comfort and solace in knowing that God sent His only Son, to save us from our
sins and open for us the gates of eternal life, yes, <slowly> but also to
suffer with us, along side us. God’s own
Son, the second person of the Trinity, true God and true man, knows what it’s
like to suffer. Oh, does He know.
- He
suffered the loss of his earthly father.
- He wept at
the tomb of Lazarus.
- He felt the
sting of abandonment and betrayal.
- He was
scourged, scorned, had a crown of thorns pressed into
his skull,
- He was
made to carry his cross up the hill of Calvary,
- there He
was stripped naked,
- and nailed
to a tree to die an excruciating, humiliating, criminal’s death.
He did it for you. He
did it for me. He loves you that
much. He loves me that much.
In His suffering Sacred Heart, Our Lord
shows us His tender compassion – compassion - a word that literally means “to
suffer with.” In His compassionate,
loving, suffering heart, Jesus feels every bit of our anguish. It pains Him, it pains His suffering Sacred
Heart, to see us, whom He dearly loves, in our own agonies of loss,
abandonment, betrayal, pain and humiliation.
How can we repay Our Lord, who loves us
so much? What return can we make? Well, it certainly provides some comfort for
us to offer up our sufferings, to unite them to the suffering, passion and
death of Our Blessed Lord.
But moreover, we can witness to and make
known the presence of Our Lord’s suffering Sacred Heart in this world by our
reaching out to others in their sufferings, in their loss, in their pain. You and I can bring the Compassion of Our
Lord to a hurting, broken world desperately in need of it, walking alongside
others in their sufferings.
So as we continue our liturgy, as we
worship Our Lord’s Sacred Heart and are blessed by His Sacred Body, may His
suffering heart give us comfort and peace in our own afflictions, and may He
shed His grace upon us to strengthen us and embolden us to be His loving presence
in our hurting world.
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