By His Wounds
Twenty-Ninth Sunday of the Year. Fr Joseph Bailham wonders how God can take pleasure in suffering.
The first reading this Sunday opens with a startling line: ‘The Lord has been pleased to crush his servant with suffering.’ Read in isolation, this line might deeply trouble us. Why would it please God to crush his servant with suffering? An enemy, one might be more appreciative or understanding of, though even then we might raise an eyebrow in doubt. It reminds me of my meeting with our candidates last week on our RCIA programme, seeking reception into full communion with the Church at Easter next year. We discussed whether we could deduce from human reason that God is in fact good rather than evil: some highlighted passages in scripture that they found troubling, where it might seem God desires the harm of others, even their death, and wondered whether this called into question God’s goodness. The opening line of the first reading today might strike a similar tone.
But as the first reading unfolds, we are given a bit more context. We see that if the servant offers his life in atonement, then ‘he shall see his heirs, he shall have a long life.’ In fact, in the Greek version of the Old Testament—the Septuagint—the word in our translation presented as ‘crush’ actually means ‘to make clean’ or ‘purify’ or ‘render pure’ (katharisai). In the Hebrew, the word daka’ is used, which means ‘to bruise.’ To crush has a greater sense of finality to it—an enemy crushed is an enemy defeated. But as we see in this reading, the one whom the Lord is pleased to ‘crush’ as our translation puts it, is not a lost cause but rather bears fruit. Suffering here, then, has a silver lining. If endured willingly, then a positive lies ahead: he shall see his heirs and have a long life. Further on, we read that, ‘by his sufferings shall my servant justify many, taking their faults on himself.’ With the eyes of Christian faith, we of course see here in the Prophet Isaiah the prefigurement of the person of Jesus Christ.
Christ in the Gospel alludes to his future sufferings in cryptic terms. To James and John he says, ‘Can you drink the cup that I must drink, or be baptised with the baptism which I must be baptised?’ The Messiah’s future suffering is also given another context: ‘the Son of Man himself did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.’ Service and suffering. This is what characterises Christian living for it is the hallmark of Christ’s own life which we seek to imitate.
Perhaps when we think of our own sufferings in life, crushed is the exact word we might most readily identify with. The pain of our families divided, the pain of moral failure, the pain of grief and loss, the pain of feeling lost, the pain of disappointment of one kind or another. Our own experience of suffering may seem like a dead end, a battle lost. Looking in isolation at Christ hanging upon the cross might also seem like a defeat, a failed project to some. And yet, with the eyes of faith, we know that Christ hangs upon that cross not as one defeated but as conqueror. Through his sufferings and death, we see the purification not of Christ himself who is God become flesh and so pure and spotless, but rather the purification of us all who lack the fullness of grace, which is divine life, which is love. It is love that is poured out upon that cross and which is given to us. The Lord has been pleased to crush/purify/bruise his servant because that servant is the Lord himself. He willingly underwent all that he did for our sake because he loves us more than we can possibly imagine. He shows us that suffering willingly embraced and endured is redemptive. With the prospect of legislation in this country bringing about the hastening of death through assisted suicide, we need to hear more than ever of the redemptive qualities of suffering, how something though in and of itself not good, can nevertheless sow the seeds of redemption. Suffering for the Christian is an invitation, an invitation to love more with arms outstretched.
Frances Flatman
Found your trip into Hebrew very helpful.
Our Lexio group tussled with the issue too and explored things not so much from human views but from God’s. In the Incarnation and cross – his total solidarity with humanity – unlike other gods. Thus we meet the astounding self-gift of God to us. FF
Catherine
What I’m trying to work out from this about suffering being purifying and redemptive is that it seems that if we suffer in union with God’s love, then we, through Christ, do the little we can to pay for the effects and results of evil in our lives and world. That lovingly we accept that we are all one in Him and that we too are, to varying degrees,sinful, then we are part of redemption somehow. Yet my suffering is often my own fault in many ways, through the way I’ve behaved or failed to do some sort of good etc. It’s kind of overwhelming to think that God is so humble, as to allow us to join in his salvation of us all. I hope I’ve got this right. The ‘problem’ – for me – of suffering was for a long time impossible to comprehend, in that a good God could allow this. I still don’t understand it all when it comes to babies etc suffering, but this will be enough for me to believe and not to ‘know’ all of it. Thank you.