Jesus Suffered the Most
For some reason, we can feel the urge to try to prove something we are going through is worse than the struggles of others.
If your spouse is in pain, your pain is certainly worse.
If your coworker thinks she had a bad week, just wait until she hears how YOUR week went.
If your friend is carrying a heavy cross, yours must be heavier.
Why do we have this impulse? I’ve considered this many times.
The best theory I have right now is that pain and suffering are isolating. They strip away the things we used to define ourselves by. Life does not pause to let us mourn and process our pains, whether they be physical, mental, or spiritual. So we are all forced to keep marching on, while our human hearts cry out, “Please see me, I am hurting!”
If we admit someone else may be suffering more, it can feel like it undermines our own suffering. This can be especially true if the person carrying the heavier cross seems to be carrying it better. It can make us feel guilty or even confused, so instead we resort to insisting our suffering is worse. It has to be! Or else, that would mean we could be trying harder to carry it.
But no one suffered more than Jesus. That cross means the suffering “competition” is already closed. The winner is our Savior, who carried every single sin on His back as He walked up to Cavalry.
When we admit this to ourselves: that the greatest suffering has already been endured, we are free to define ourselves by something greater than our own suffering.
In fact, we are invited to offer our own suffering at the foot of the cross, to allow our blood and tears to mingle with the blood and water that gushed forth from His side.
We are invited to offer back to God the small experiences of Christ’s suffering we are handed to endure. And by uniting them to Christ on the cross, we learn to define ourselves by Him, rather than the pain.
Holy Week invites us to come to the feast, to take a small sip from the great cup that Christ was born to drink to the full. It is a call to humility, to remember that our suffering is but a tiny experience of His, and of His Mother’s.
But, at the same time, Christ’s suffering is a validation of our pain. Even God did not spare Himself. In fact, His suffering was necessary to save the human race, to bring it back to Him.
And in many ways, our own suffering is necessary to help us save ourselves, to bring our hearts back to Him. Nothing makes the human heart turn to God faster than fear and pain.
These are fragments of thoughts about this topic. Suffering is a great and painful mystery, but in Christ crucified it at least finds a grand purpose.
And so, as we gather together during this Triduum, may we remember that we are many parts of the one Body of Christ in the Church. If one member is hurting, may we all seek to carry that pain. And those who are hurting, may we remember to offer up our suffering for all of those who are carrying us through bearing it.
In this way, we all take turns being Christ and Simon, carrying the pain and helping it to be carried, as we walk that narrow way to Calvary together.
May God bless each of you with the comfort that comes with being more than your heartbreak, and instead being His.