The Meaning That Carries Us Through Suffering

Truly, truly, He was the Son of God.

​In the men’s group, we are reading this book
by Viktor Frankl, “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
Viktor Frankl was a renowned psychologist
in Vienna at the time of the Second World War,
and he was taken by the Nazis
and put into concentration camps.

Everything was taken away from him,
his parents, his brother,
his pregnant wife, his career.
Even his name was stripped from him.
He was just given a number. Everything.
And in this worst place of human suffering,

he came to a profound realization.

Who was it among them that survived?
It was not the strongest.
It was not the smartest.
It was the one who had meaning in their life.
And the meaning had to be greater
than the suffering.

For him, the meaning was surviving
for the love of his wife.
He kept on imagining his wife
and the love that they shared,
and that was what gave meaning.

Why that is so important to reflect on today
as we celebrate Passion Sunday,
is that there is a temptation
to exalt the suffering part of it.

We will be tempted by this on Good Friday,
that suffering in itself is a good thing.
But what we are reminded by Christ
is that it is not the suffering that matters.
It is the greater meaning of why He did it.

The greater meaning was the love of humanity,
the love of you and I,
the love of every human being.
He poured Himself out completely
and vulnerably and consciously.
He was very aware that He was doing this.
This was not a coerced sacrifice.

In the drama we hear today,
the crowd who cheered Him and said,
Hosanna, Hosanna, you are the King,
is the very same crowd that says,
Crucify Him, crucify Him.
We are deliberately meant
to see ourselves in that.
The gospel is always a mirror for us.

On Sunday, they cheer Him,
and on Friday, they condemn Him.
And the truth be told in our own lives,
if we are honest,
on Sunday, we will praise Jesus,
and on Monday, we will betray Him.
We will do something that is not consistent
with what and who we are.
We are called to see that contradiction,
and then we are called to follow
and do what Jesus did.

Jesus knew they were praising Him
and lauding Him as the King.
But it is not the King
He knew He was going to be.
They were thinking of Him
as a King of strength, a King of war,
a King that will take over.
But He knew that He was a King
who was going to lay down His life.
He was going to pour Himself out
for His people.

He knew that these very same people
would only a couple of days later
cheer for His crucifixion.
And yet, He still chose them.
He still entered Jerusalem
knowing what was going to happen.

In the second reading from the Philippians,
we hear that He poured Himself out.
He did not take on humanity,
He poured Himself out of His divinity
knowing He was taking on the human condition.

The Greek word for that is kenosis.
It means a self-emptying,
a complete pouring out
of everything that is left.
And that is exactly what Jesus does.
He pours Himself out completely to us.

The challenge for us in our society today
is that this message is hard.
We live in a society that is very transactional.
You do for me, and I do for you.
I give you this,
and I get this in return with interest.
It is almost the religion of the economy.

This creeps into our friendships
and our relationships,
and even our marriages.
It becomes like almost a quid pro quo.
But here is the really sad part of it.
It also creeps into our relationship with God.

We say, “Well, I have done this, Lord,
now you need to do it for me.
I have said my prayers.
I have been a good Catholic.
I have gone to church every Sunday.
So now I am meant to have all the good things.”
See how it works?
We have this quid pro quo relationship,
even with our God.

It is hard to break out of,
because we are so immersed in it.
But what we do here is very different,
my friends.
What we do here is this kenosis.
We profess that this is our model,
that we are going to pour ourselves out
for others.

Who did Jesus pour Himself out for?
He did not just pour Himself out
for His friends.
He poured Himself out for Judas,
who He knew was going to betray Him.
He poured Himself out for Peter,
who He knew was going to deny Him.
He even poured Himself out
for the soldiers that jeered Him
and crucified Him.
He poured Himself out for all the strangers
who would never even know what He had done.

He made the ultimate.
He sacrificed everything,
because His love for us
was greater than the sacrifice.
That is the model we are trying to hold on to.

We are called to pour ourselves out
for the whole world.
We have this temptation to follow the crowd.
The crowd says this, and we do this.
The crowd says, cheer, so we cheer.
The crowd says, crucify, so we crucify.
We have to resist the temptation
of going along with the crowd.

We have to be the prophetic ones
and not go along.
In today’s society,
we need to be willing to sacrifice,
pour ourselves out,
because our meaning is greater than that.
We have a love for Christ and for others
that is greater than the suffering
we might suffer.
We are called to kenosis,
to empty ourselves for others.

The only way I know how to do this,
my friends,
is to get the strength from the Lord.
We watch His witness,
we are inspired by His witness,
and we follow Him.
Not just talk about Him,
not just listen to Him,
but really follow His example
of pouring ourselves out to others.

Sure, it means we pour ourselves out
to our family and friends.
In a sense, that is the easiest part,
because we love them,
and our love is clearly greater
than the sacrifice.

Where it gets tougher
is when we are called to pour ourselves out
for those who do not like us,
and we do not like them.
It gets tougher when we pour ourselves out
for those who are on the margins,
who we do not really even know.

Those immigrants who are suffering,
those people who are married and divorced
and remarried are suffering deeply.
We are called to love them
and to recognize them.
We are called to recognize all those
suffering because of war,
in Ukraine and Iran,
even if we do not know who they are.

We are called to somehow pour ourselves out,
saying, this is not who we are,
regardless of what they do,
whoever they are.

So today, as we hear this passion,
let us first recognize
that the sharing of good
or going along with the bad
is within every single one of us.
Let us not deny that.

Then we need to make sure
that we do not go along with the crowd
and we follow Christ.
This is the Christ we follow,
the one who pours Himself out
for the love of others.

Because like Viktor Frankl said,
when we have a why, a meaning in our life,
the love of others,
then we can endure
an immense amount of suffering in the how.

Let us not go along.
Let us recognize that Christ is our Savior,
and we come to follow Him
in the way of self-emptying,
sacrificing for others.

Truly, truly, He was the Son of God.