SUFFERING IS NEVER THE LAST WORD

 

          The following is an excerpt from an editorial written by the editors of America magazine – a Jesuit publication.  The editorial in its entirety can be viewed at: http://americamagazine.org/issue/marathon

 

 The Marathon

          This is not the first time such pointless suffering has been inflicted, and it will surely, sadly, not be the last. Our hearts have been cracked open and pried apart again by tragedy. But this fractured heart makes space for love to grow, to pour forth and to flow into the world.

 

           This is the love that tears down fences instead of fleeing the horror.

 

           This is the love that stanches the blood flowing from severed limbs, picks up the fallen, comforts the injured.

 

           This is the love that spends frantic moments that seem like an eternity seeking after loved ones, forgetting old resentments upon the news that they are safe and secure.

           This is the love that aches over the murder of innocent bystanders.

 

          “In the midst of the darkness of this tragedy,” said Cardinal Sean O’Malley, O.F.M.Cap., of Boston, “we turn to the light of Christ.”

 

          At the end of this Easter season, Boston has been returned to Good Friday, a day that teaches us that we have a God who understands suffering.

 

 

          Everyone on the first Good Friday in Jerusalem knew suffering. Jesus’ disciples, who had expected a joyful victory, confronted instead a miserable failure. Family and friends had followed him into the city in great happiness; they were rewarded with uncontainable grief. Like the people in Boston, who had prepared for joy, they must have struggled to accept all the day’s misery. Here was the person they loved, for whom they had great hopes, cut down. It did not make sense.

 

           A victim of senseless violence as surely as those on Boylston Street, Jesus is with us in our suffering, not only because he loves us, but because he has suffered too.

 

           But suffering is never the last word. There is always the possibility of new life. But how will that victory be achieved? The end of our race, where we know peace and mercy overtake the darkness, may be too distant to see now, as it was impossible for the disciples on Good Friday to see; but the God who has suffered is ready to help us, always holding out the promise of something new, something that will help us move beyond the blood and the tears.

 

           That was true in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago, and it is true in Boston—and anywhere else the darkness may fall—today.