With the celebration of Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion we begin the most Holy Week of our liturgical year. During this week we will enter into the Lord’s Passion and death and await his resurrection. Jesus Christ suffered and died for us. At the heart of this Holy Week is this great mystery of the suffering of God. God so loved us that he gave his Son to suffer and die for our sins. The Father suffers through the Son. In order to enter into the suffering of the world God must empty himself of his divine glory and accept the humble and lowly suffering of a slave. God is willing to do this for us. This self-emptying of God is known in theology as “kenosis”. Jesus pours out his life for us, he empties himself of life to the extreme of death, a humiliating death on a cross.

This kenosis of Jesus in taking on our human form and accepting the suffering of the cross for our sins is a sign of God’s love for us. God does not withhold anything from us. Jesus lays down his life out of love for us. In the Passion Jesus will plumb the depths of human suffering and through his presence to it he will redeem suffering from its meaninglessness. Jesus empties himself and lays down his life as an act of freedom and love. It is an oblation of love, a self-offering, a total sacrifice offered in love. Jesus is not constrained, coerced or in any way forced to undergo this suffering. He freely chooses the Passion out of love for us. No one takes the life of Jesus away from him, rather he freely lays it down out of love. In this we see that suffering is not a sign of human weakness but ultimately of power and strength to use our freedom to choose love and suffering over sin and evil.
As human persons we do not like to suffer. We will most likely do anything we can to avoid suffering. Even the smallest amount of suffering is seen as something to avoid rather than to embrace. People will go to great lengths to escape from suffering even to the point of making someone else suffer. Think of all those who are caught up in addictions and flights from suffering who are unmoved by the suffering that they are causing others around them. Jesus takes all of that suffering upon himself freely. He shows us that the only way out of suffering is by passing through it. Jesus redefines suffering for us and gives it a redemptive meaning. In this way he is victorious in his suffering for he doesn’t allow suffering to define him but rather he redefines suffering as an act of love, freedom and power.

This Holy Week of the Lord’s Passion is made holy by the suffering of our Lord. The suffering of the Lord purifies human life. There is no true holiness without sacrifice and suffering. Holiness is not just some pious stance in life but is a willingness to be purified in suffering. If we want to be holy as our Lord God is holy then we must also be willing to suffer as our Lord suffered.
This Holy Week we are invited to join with our Lord and share in his suffering. As St. Paul reminded us, our sufferings are a share in the suffering of the Lord. We never need to suffer alone for God has filled suffering with his presence. Through our sharing in the suffering of the Lord and our entering into the suffering of the whole world we will be purified and made holy. We participate in this Holy Week with our whole being. We do not just listen to a beautiful story of our salvation and offer prayers of thanksgiving that we were spared from the suffering for our sins, but we pick up the cross of our sufferings and follow Jesus in love. We offer our life as a sacrifice of love and suffer for the salvation of the world. Every suffering that we encounter can be offered for others and joined to the Lord’s Passion.

As we experience once again the Passion of the Lord we are called to examine our lives and see in what way we are being called to suffer for others. There is much in our world that needs redemption, there is much that needs cleansing, there is much that needs conversion. We can be a part of the change that we want to see in the world by our willingness to sacrifice for that change. May your Holy Week be blessed with a deeper share in our Lord’s suffering so that we might share more deeply in his divine and eternal life.