PALM SUNDAY

A Grown-up Comfort

In the movie Father Stu, the true story of a man’s challenging journey to the priesthood, Fr. Stuart Long is forced to face his own suffering and pain. Through his suffering he is called out of himself. He learns to accept his deteriorating condition, and through it he matures. Toward the end of his life he says, “The experience of suffering is the fullest expression of God’s love. It is a chance to be closer to Christ.” 

In today’s gospel the Church puts Christ’s Passion fully in front of us, and we are hit head on by a freight train of suffering and love. In this longest reading of the liturgical year — the passion and death of Christ — we get the story of Christ offering his suffering to God for our redemption. 

It is hard to think too much about Christ’s passion and crucifixion without feeling some discomfort. It is also hard to be complacent and take God for granted when thinking about the brutality of the crucifixion itself, a method of execution known for prolonging the suffering of its victims. But God doesn't want us to be complacent or to make him too comfortable. He doesn’t want us to tame him. He won’t let us keep him in his place, housebound and comfortably resting like some harmless grandpa in his easy chair. Christ didn’t live that way, and he certainly didn’t die that way. Nor does the Church want us to live that way. “If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable,” C.S. Lewis said, “I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”  

To be sure, the Church does not condemn comfort; we are not killjoys who forswear the pleasures of this life. And having a basic level of comfort is important. Our word “comfort” derives from the Latin, com (with) and fortis (strong). To have comfort, then, is to have strength. To be comfortable is to feel safe, rested and at ease – conditions that, in part, underpin strength. A warm blanket and a restful vacation are good things. But if they are all we pursue, we waste the emotional and psychological strength we might derive from them. Pursuing first and foremost a long and comfortable life is a recipe for a stunted life. Christ did not seek comfort first. Despite even the triumph of his entry into Jerusalem, which we heard at the start of Mass on this Palm Sunday, Christ knew that his greater journey was toward Calvary. 

Like Fr. Stu, when we learn to use our own inevitable hardships as a way to unite our suffering with Christ, we grow in holiness.  Suffering is not an end in itself or something to be indulged in, but a means by which we open more of our inmost selves to others and consequently mature in our faith. It unlocks us, and we gradually become more aware of our own personal mission in this life. There is a grown-up comfort in that. The Catechism tells us that “By his passion and death on the cross Christ has given a new meaning to suffering: it can henceforth configure us to him and unite us with his redemptive Passion” (CCC 1505). Let us follow Jesus’ example and not avoid the hardships and hard work of a Christian life, but instead use them to find our deepest happiness and maturity in Christ.

–Jim Healy

Send Us Forth are reflections written by St. Matthew parishioners and friends.