In these past few weeks, we have witnessed so much evil. It has been a very rough time, yet the reality remains: evil will exist in this world until our Lord comes again.
In the providence of the Church, we celebrated the Exaltation of the Cross last week—a feast that confronts us with the evil of killing God Himself. The One who stood for truth, who proclaimed the Kingdom of Heaven, was killed.
As I reflected on recent events—especially the violence we have seen—I could not help but think of the cross and of pain. I ask you to pray for all the victims of violence in these past weeks and throughout this year. We need prayer deeply.
When we witness such evil and reflect on the Exaltation of the Cross, we are led to consider pain.
We will never feel the pain of certain families who have lost loved ones, or the pain of others’ unique sufferings. Yet pain is unavoidable in life. Much of what we do is an attempt to avoid it, to shield ourselves from suffering. But the Church places before us the ultimate image of pain: our crucified Lord, lifted high on the cross.
Suffering comes in many dimensions. We know physical suffering—every one of us has experienced illness, injury, or bodily pain. Then there is psychological suffering: rejection, loneliness, loss, betrayal by those closest to us. But beneath all this lies a deeper wound: existential suffering. This is the pain of meaninglessness, the loss of purpose, the emptiness that cries out for connection with God.
Consider all these dimensions of suffering together. We see that pain and sin are often linked. When we are in pain, how do we treat others? Often not well. Pain pushes us toward selfishness, toward lashing out, toward inflicting suffering on others. Whether physical, psychological, or existential, pain can draw out the worst in us.
Then we turn to the cross. I hope each of you has a crucifix in your home, one you look upon every day. There we see a man in the most excruciating physical suffering—Jesus nailed to the instrument of torture. But the cross is more than physical pain. Jesus endured betrayal, abandonment, denial, humiliation, mockery, and scorn. That is profound psychological pain.
Remeber that Jesus cried out: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” That is existential pain was felt loss of connection with God.
On the cross, Jesus experiences the ultimate limit of every form of pain any human being could suffer. If He were only a man, we would say He was a martyr for truth, a noble soul who suffered unjustly. But the reason the Church exalts this image is because it is not just a man on the cross. It is God.
It is God who entered into the depths of human suffering. God who bore the extremes of physical, psychological, and existential pain. God who embraced the full weight of sin and evil. And why? To conquer it.
Pain and sin are connected—and so, in conquering pain, God also conquers sin. This is why we say that when Jesus was lifted up on the cross, He became sin. Sin was defeated not by avoidance, but by the death of God Himself and by His glorious resurrection.
The answer to our pain, to our suffering, to the evil we see around us, is always the same: the cross. The cross of Christ, where God’s love and mercy prove greater than all the suffering and evil of the world. It is there that we find redemption.
Father James Schibi, Pastor