5^th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

 

Readings : Job 7:1-4, 6-7

                 1Corinthians 9:16-19, 22-23

                 Mark 1:29-39

 

 

“He cured many who were sick

with various diseases…”

 

            The question on human suffering is as old as humanity. Yet, it is still a valid question to modern man. The struggle for an absolute answer to it seems unending. This is why philosophies are born. Gautama Buddha’s “four noble truths and eight noble paths” is just one of the fruits of man’s painstaking efforts as he continues to confront the reality of suffering. Perhaps, the struggle stops only when humanity itself disappears. Our readings today invites us to meditate on the same question. Today, we reflect on Christianity’s own modest way of looking at suffering through the eyes of faith.

 

1.         We start with the Book of Job which contains today’s first reading. The book treats one basic question: “Why does a just man have to suffer?” Believe to have been written in three stages, it tries to offer three possible answers: first, it describes suffering as a test; second, it considers suffering as punishment for sin; third, it takes suffering as something mysterious.

 

What makes the Book of Job a world classic is its relevance. The three possible answers it offers seem to be the three different levels of man’s attitude toward suffering as it increasingly and persistently confront him. Job seems to stand in behalf of humanity. Every word that comes out of his mouth bespeaks of the anguish and sentiment of every person confronted by suffering. Look. When suffering is light and it comes for the first time, man takes it easily as a test. As if he were one with Job. "We accept good things from God. Should we not accept evil?” (Job 2:10) But when suffering continues and gets heavier, man begins to give a moral meaning to it. He thinks of his sin as the cause. And maybe, he starts to regret, repent and amend. And yet, when suffering persists and grows even worse than before, man finds himself cursing life (like Job cursing the hour of his birth, cf Job 3:3ff), questioning, blaming and even accusing God as cruel, unjust, capricious, indeed, as someone who finds pleasure in man's sorrow. This is exactly the sentiments of Job (cf Job 10:3 ft). But as Job wants to teach a nobler truth, he does not really end up with despair. To him, suffering is mysterious. It is part of God's mysterious way of handling his creation. When things go wrong and everything seems to sink in, man in his anguish may sigh, but only God perfectly knows the reason why.

 

2. Where Job ends, the Christian teaching on suffering begins. In today's gospel, God, in the person of Christ, comes in direct contact with human suffering. It is one of the narratives upon which is founded our Christian theology of suffering. Our Christian faith teaches the following points, among others:

 

            a. Suffering is evil. More of a privation, it is a state or a condition of or in life wherein a particular good which is ought to be there is not there. Suffering is quite comprehensive. It ranges from mere physical privation to a broader scope of social privation. Thus, we may talk about sickness and other physical illnesses as referring to the former, we may speak of poverty and other forms of social illness as referring to the latter. Suffering can also be moral. This refers to sin and guilt, and its effects.

 

In whatever form, suffering is no good at all. Hence, nobody wants to suffer, and everybody must not want to suffer. Even great saints who master over suffering do not suffer for suffering's sake. Should anyone wants to suffer for suffering's sake, he must in fact be suffering already from a grave mental disorder. For this reason, Christ does not sanctify suffering as such. We must not play with any false illusion that Christ does. If ever we hear Christ says "Blessed are those who suffer…” we must not misunderstand it as if it were to mean "Blessed is suffering…”  What Christ considers blessed are those who suffer; meaning, the victims of suffering and not suffering itself. This brings us to the second point of our reflection.

 

b. The victim of suffering is someone to be empathized with. Christ abhors suffering, but never the victim of it. In all his direct contact with the people who suffer, what we see in him is an incomparable compassion. Thus, he cannot afford to simply look at them. To those who suffer from various diseases and other forms of physical illness, he gives cure: sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the mute, cleansing to the lepers, and even life to the dead. To those who suffer from social illness, he fills them from their want: food to the hungry, freedom to prisoners, and the promise of God's reign to the poor. And even to those who suffer from moral illness, Christ looks at them with pity and love. To him, sin must be hated, but the sinner must be loved. His compassion and love are an expression of how much he wants to be with them in order to feel just the way they do. For Christ, his closeness to them is much more important than the miracles he performs in order to free them from their afflictions.

 

Not only does Christ show his empathy to them by filling their wants nor by being with them. His greatest way of showing it is by suffering himself. This is one sublime truth we can deduce from the mystery of his passion. Indeed, there is no need for him to undergo any form of suffering just to save us. He could have saved us in a magical way. That would have been the easiest way of doing things for someone powerful like him. But what would it bring to man and to him? Well, perhaps an immediate answer to man, and a hero-image to Christ. In this case, we would certainly be following a great God, powerful indeed, but a God so totally detached from human experience. This has already been proven by the miracles he performs. People follow him not so much because of any good teaching he may give as it is because of the bread he multiplies. Doing things in the human way is the best way of making sense to human beings. This brings us to the last point of our reflection.

 

c. Man's suffering is a participation of Christ's own suffering. Surely, Christ chose the road to Calvary as a human way of teaching us the meaning of our own suffering. Whenever we suffer, we "fill up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of his body, the church” (Col 1:24). Of course, this does not mean that Christ's suffering is not complete. The victory on the cross is complete once and for all. Thus, while the redemption it brings is objective, the subjective sense of it is what we bear in and for every pain and suffering we experience. And as the glory of the resurrection has become more magnanimous because of the suffering on the cross, the reward at our final victory also becomes sweeter because of the suffering we undergo. This is the nobler part of our Christian teaching on human suffering. Our theology of suffering gets its source from the theology of the cross.