Monday of 23rd week in Course
The words of St. Paul to the Colossians are a tremendous stumbling block for some Christians. What is lacking in the sufferings of Jesus Christ? The obvious answer that we can all affirm, is “nothing is lacking.” Objectively, Jesus suffered and died and won our redemption, all of our redemption. When we sacramentally are joined by the Holy Spirit to the Body of Christ, participating in His mysteries, we share in the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus, and nothing is lacking in Christ so that we may fully participate.
That is, except one thing. Suffering is real for all humans, and these days, in this culture, Christians suffer more than others because we grieve over the direction Western culture has taken, over the injustices done by companies and governments and individuals. We have to join our physical and emotional and spiritual sufferings to those of Jesus. Pain and grief and loss are not meaningless human activities, because Jesus partook of them to the full. That means that the challenge is to fill up what is lacking in the Body of Christ, not the Head. We make our own pain meaningful when we join it to that of Christ. And we can do that as we receive communion. Communion is not a reward for being good—it is a remedy for our weakness and venial sins. Jesus offers Himself as a cure for what ails our bodies, souls, spirits. And as we join our humanity to His, we become more united as His family, His body. This is the mystery hidden for ages and revealed in Christ and His Church.
Our Gospel today should help us to understand the fundamental tensions involved in the life of Christ that caused Him suffering, and brought us healing, apart from His crucifixion. The Sabbath should be a weekly celebration of liberation from slavery—that was the original meaning given by God through Moses after the people of Israel were freed from Egyptian captivity. But the Pharisees had turned Sabbath observance into a kind of slavery itself, just a list of activities that were proscribed and sinful for Jews. They took offense when Jesus, who elsewhere described Himself as the “Lord of the Sabbath,” brought a man with a deformity forward from the congregation and challenged them with a simple question: “is it lawful on the sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?” When He received no answer, He did good, healing the man's condition and liberating him to work and to worship. The result in most Gospel stories—the witnesses praising God and believing in Jesus—was different here. The self-styled guardians of the Law “were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.” The challenge to us is to do good as Jesus did so we can attract many to Christ and the Church, and to be prepared when we are vilified and mocked for our faith, continuing to act in love so that even the mockers and persecutors can have faith in Jesus.
