Homily for Palm Sunday
14 April 2019
Fr David Ranson
Diocesan Administrator
In the mid 1990s, Arthur W. Frank published a landmark and fascinating study on people’s response to illness, entitled, The Wounded Storyteller. As a professor of sociology at the University of Calgary, Frank considered the various ways we respond to our illness, particularly the illnesses that are chronic in their character. He identified a number of responses that we make to our experience of such illness ranging from denial through to resignation – none of which were especially helpful in learning how to live in the fullest way in the face of our illness. What he suggested as the most redemptive or transformative pathway was what he termed as being the wounded storyteller: arriving at a position of acceptance in our illness that could allow it to become something shared with others. As learn to tell the narrative of our illness in a way that includes others, joins with others, allows possibility for others, then we discover the seeds of a new sense of courage and meaning in what we experience. We may never recover from our illness, but our illness does not need become simply an experience enclosing us in on ourselves, isolating us, destructive of our sense of dignity and purpose.
Suffering is inevitable in our life. It can be physical; it can be emotional; it can be spiritual. We do not choose our suffering. In many ways, for reasons unknown to us, our suffering chooses us. But we can choose what attitude we bring to our suffering. And this can make all the difference.
On this Passion Sunday we reflect on the suffering of Jesus. Day by day this week we will be led into the drama of his suffering, the consequence of his passionate love. The suffering Christ stands almost as the epitome of human suffering. He mirrors suffering humanity. And yet at the height of his suffering, on the Cross, as the Gospel for this year indicates, he is surrounded, by two very different attitudes to suffering, exemplified by the two figures who are crucified with him. I think they represent the two very different responses we can make to our own experience of suffering.
The first figure cannot reconcile suffering with his understanding of God. If God exists how can there be suffering? Suffering is a negation of God. If God were truly good there would be no suffering in the world. “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us.” In other words, deliver us, free us, defend us from this suffering. It is the attitude we hear on so many different occasions. It is the attitude that profoundly struggles with the reality of suffering, and which regards suffering as the antithesis of the life to which we aspire – controlled, clean, contained. It is the attitude that insidiously permeates the arguments about the right to die, assisted dying, euthanasia. What we are really seeking to do is to euthanize our suffering. Suffering and a live fully lived cannot go together.
The second figure – interestingly the one whom legend suggests as the revolutionary, the one who fought for a different life, a better future – represents quite a different attitude. Rather than defending himself against suffering, he seems to enter it. He accepts the reality of his suffering, is not afraid of it. He reflects on it. But more than this, he sees in his suffering the possibility of companionship with the Other who suffers alongside him. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And for him, this openness in the midst of his vulnerability transforms him: “Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
The extraordinary drama of the crucifixion of Jesus is the most remarkable journey into the paradox of suffering. None of us want to suffer; all of us are committed to alleviating suffering. But suffering is an unavoidable experience in life. It is a constituent element of our identity as creatures - limited, finite, mortal. This is why the story of Jesus’ passion and death holds such meaning for us. We never tire of its narrative. It keeps speaking to our hearts.
At the heart of life is the struggle to answer the question about suffering. And through our own encounter with the Crucified and Risen Christ, as Christians we have answered the question in a very precise way. Suffering love is the one answer to anxiety suffered.
In other words, in the suffering we experience there is a possibility – the possibility of discovering a greater bond with others forged through our gift and reception of care and a deeper sense of solidarity with each other in our vulnerability. Another way of saying it is that when our vulnerability becomes a place of hospitality, there we see the beauty of our humanity shine out in an altogether unmistakable way. We can become wounded storytellers – people who are allow our wounds to become meaning for others. Suffering love is the one answer to anxiety suffered. A love that holds another, bears another, carries another, journeys with another – this is what transforms the experience of suffering from one of isolation to communion through which we are given our dignity. This is the possibility that the second figure suffering with Jesus on Calvary experiences.
May it be ours also. For then our own Calvary will become our Easter.