Be Courageous In Your Suffering
(By Fr. Dexter Brereton)
My brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ,
When I lived in Toronto, I used to say mass every fourth Sunday for a group of really socially active Catholics in the basement of the Church of St Peter at the corner of Bloor and Bathurst Streets. I had a friend among them whom for the purposes of this homily I shall call Karen with whom I had a conversation I have never quite forgotten. She related to me one day that she was sexually abused by a relative while she was much younger. But what struck me was how she chose to relate to this incident. She said: “You know its very popular nowadays, everybody calls themselves a survivor. I am a survivor of this, I am a survivor of that. Well I refuse to call myself a survivor. I WILL NOT ALLOW MYSELF TO BE DEFINED BY AN INCIDENT. This abuse was something that HAPPENED to me, but I Karen am more than the abuse that happened to me.” What incredibly brave words! What a courageous stand! This woman chooses to control how she sees her own suffering and how she understands her own story. What she chooses to reject is not suffering but the sense of VICTIMHOOD and SELF-PITY that are often a part of the lives of those who suffer grievously.
Something similar is going on in the passion reading this afternoon. Our Holy Mother the Church offers us for our meditation at this solemn commemoration of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, the passion narrative of St. John which is without a doubt the most triumphant, the most majestic rendering of the story of Jesus’ final hours in any of the four canonical gospels. The key to understanding the manner in which Jesus is portrayed is to be found in this little passage from John 10: 17-18: The Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me; I lay it down of my own free will, and as I have power to lay it down, so I have power to take it up again.
Jesus as portrayed in this passion narrative is completely aware of what is happening as the gospel story itself says: “Knew everything that was going to happen to him.” The first and most major thing that John does is to remove from our minds any idea that Jesus was a “Victim”. Indeed, when the crowd of soldiers along with the traitor Judas confront him in the garden Jesus asks, “who are you looking for?” They inform him that they are looking for Jesus the Nazarene. Then Jesus says “I AM he!” This causes them, in the words of St. John to move back and “fall to the ground.” Jesus, in John’s theology is using the divine I AM to identify himself. As we read in the book of Exodus chapter 3, YHWH explains his name to Moses saying I AM WHO I AM. This becomes God’s name for all time. I Am. So Judas and his soldier friends fall back and fall down in compulsory adoration before the living God! This Jesus is very much in control of his own destiny.
This Gospel passage, in fact this whole passion narrative, where Jesus bravely meets his fate, where he remains upright and dignified in the face of this accusers can provide great inspiration for all those who in one way or the other have to “lay down their lives of their own free will.” Yesterday the world celebrated Autism awareness day. I think of all those parents out there, some I know personally who have to have the same attitude like my friend Karen, and like Jesus. They are invited to refuse to be VICTIMIZED by their situation. When the difficulties of autism visits your household like unwanted guests or like Judas and the soldiers, we must boldly say “I AM SHE” or “I AM HE”. All of us in the face of addiction in our household, or some kind of perhaps, psychological abuse are encouraged to stare Judas and the soldiers in the face and say like Jesus “I AM S/HE”. Yes my dear friends, as the two examples I have given you this evening illustrate, no one can make us a total victim without our permission. May God give strength to our feeble efforts to follow in the footsteps of his Son who willingly and freely gave laid down his life for us. Amen.
