Transcript
This Sunday of the Lord’s Passion, we begin our Holy Week: to pray, reflect and celebrate the great mystery of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. We come to know a God, in Jesus, who is not simply observing human suffering from a distance, but who is with us in our suffering. Through this great mystery, the suffering that we carry in our lives brings us into solidarity with all of humanity, and it has the ability to teach us great compassion, to be shared with others. Jesus is in solidarity with Simon, the migrant, who is plucked from the crowd, with the weeping women who follow him, and with the criminals who are crucified with him. Jesus lives in solidarity with their suffering and with ours. The cross was Jesus’ voluntary acceptance of undeserved suffering, as an act of total solidarity with the pain and injustice of the world. From the cross, Jesus teaches us that the answer to suffering is not more violence and more injustice, but trust in the power of God’s creative, forgiving and life-giving love. By sharing in our suffering, Jesus invites us to respond with generosity and compassion. Jesus invites us to receive our suffering so that it might open our eyes to the suffering of others. So that we might become compassionate witnesses of God’s boundless love and solidarity, leading us to be sharer’s in the mystery and hope of resurrection. Together, may we walk gently through the mysteries that we celebrate this Holy Week, in solidarity with one another and our God, who is walking the way of the cross with us, through suffering and death, to the new life of resurrection.