Today the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews presents for us two necessities
of the Christian life that we all too often seek to avoid: obedience and
suffering, saying, “Son though he was, [Jesus] learned obedience from what he
suffered; and when he was made perfect, he became the source of eternal
salvation for all who obey him” (Hebrews 5:8-9). Through suffering, then, we
learn obedience and from obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ we receive
eternal salvation and everlasting life.
We see this reality in what Jesus says to us in the Gospel. Referring to
himself – and to each of us – he says, “unless a grain of wheat falls to the
ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces
much fruit” (John 12:24). In order to die the grain of wheat must suffer. Its
shell must be broken and it must break free and struggle through the earth to
reach the light of day. In much the same way, whenever we suffer there is a
certain dying that takes place as we come to accept the reality that our will,
that our desires, are not in control of our lives. There is a greater will than
ours to which we must submit, to which we must be obedient for the Lord
says to us, “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also
will my servant be” (John 12:26).
We see this dual necessity – that of suffering and obedience – in the
words of Jeremiah as well. The Lord God announces through his prophet,
“The days are coming … when I will make a new covenant with the house of
Israel … I will place my will law within them and write it upon their hearts; I
will be their God and they will be my people” (Jeremiah 31:31; 33). Here
again we see that obedience to the will of God, to his Law – which always
involves a certain suffering – leads to eternal salvation, for as the Lord says, “I
will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:34).
There is an ancient Greek maxim, a proverb, if you will, that says, paqein
maqein, “to suffer is to learn.” But what do we learn in suffering? We learn
to be obedient and in becoming obedient we grow in union for the Crucified
and Risen Lord.
Very few people today like being obedient. Very often obedience is given
a quite negative connotation, almost to the point that some have difficulty
finding any good whatsoever in obedience. It is almost as though all forms of
obedience are likened to nothing more than a “blind obedience,” which in all
actuality is not obedience at all. It is simply a case of “the blind leading the
blind,” of ignorant following.
What, then, is obedience? The English word comes from the Latin
obidere meaning, “to listen, to hear.” Obedience does not so much consist in
following orders and commands simply because they are given as it does in
being attentive and attuned to the will and desires of the Master. For
Christians, obedience means listening so intently to the voice of Christ that we
know his will for us and we see the good that he has in store for us and so we
do desire his will as our own. When one is truly obedient, one does not
question commands because the good in store is evident; there are no
questions to ask because there is no sense of being oppressed or used. We no
longer need to question the purpose of suffering because we come to know
that obedience in suffering leads to salvation, to a sharing in the Paschal
Mystery of Christ the Redeemer.
In the life of Jesus we find the perfect model of obedience to the will of
the Father. In all things he freely followed the divine will, even in suffering.
We know that Christ Jesus,
emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and
found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death,
even death on a cross (Philippians 2:6-8).
Jesus knows the great difficulty of uniting our will to that of the Father; he
knows how very hard it is to accept suffering and to embrace it. But it is
precisely “because he himself was tested through what he suffered, [that] he is
able to help those who are being tested” (Hebrews 2:18). He knows the
difficulty we face and he has come to alleviate it, to give us “a model to
follow, so that as [he has] done for [us], [we] should also do” (John 13:15).
Indeed, Jesus says to us, “I give you a new commandment: love one another.
As I have loved you, so you also should love one another” (John 13:34).
In his Encyclical Letter, Pope Benedict XVI speaks of the will of God and
he reminds us:
The love-story between God and man consists in the very fact that this
communion of will increases in a communion of thought and sentiment, and
thus our will and God’s will increasingly coincide: God’s will is no longer for
me an alien will, something imposed on me from without by the
commandments, but it is now my own will, based on the realization that God
is in fact more deeply present to me than I am to myself. Then self-
abandonment to God increases and God becomes our joy” [Deus caritas est,
17).
The more that we yield to the will of God, the more that we yield to our
suffering and seek to unite it with the Passion of Christ, the greater our joy
becomes. It is one of the great paradoxes of the Christian faith.
But when we directly face our suffering we say with Jesus, “I am troubled
now. Yet what should I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour?’) John 12:27).
More often than not we ask the Lord to take our suffering away from us,
forgetting that the Son of God accepted his suffering and invites us to do the
same, saying, “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and
take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).
In these final days of Lent, then, let us not run from suffering and from
obedience. Let us, rather, take confidence that in obedient suffering new
growth and life will be given us, for as the Lord said to St. Paul, “My grace is
sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (II Corinthians 12:
9).
“Sir, we would like to see Jesus,” the Greeks said to Philip (John ). Jesus then
responds to the Apostles, as if telling them to convey this message to the
Greeks, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John ). The
hour has come for love to triumph over death; the hour has come for the
Cross.
We do not know if the Greeks ever saw Jesus. I suspect they did see him if
they could accept his message of the grain of wheat and of the Cross; but if
they could not accept it then I suspect they did not see Jesus. It is much the
same with us. May we ask to see the Lord and so accept his message.
Let us follow the example of the Lord and carry our cross together with him
on the road to Calvary. Let us always remember that when we carry our
cross with the Lord Jesus, the name of the Father will be glorified and we will
find our joy.
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