The Wounds of Our Past Leave Their Mark
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The Holy Father’s Bull on Divine Mercy may be found here and may help in the chat:
On Sunday we will chat about salvation by suffering
In the wake of Jesus’ crucifixion and death, the apostles were locked away together in fear. They were afraid that they might suffer the same fate as their teacher. Despite their anxious seclusion, Jesus breaks into their lives- not merely into the physical space in which they were taking refuge. Jesus also breaks into the core of their minds and hearts. Jesus attempts to calm their fears. He challenges them to be at peace. He does this in a rather confrontational and mysterious manner: by showing them the wounds in his hands and side.
It is remarkable that the experience of resurrection did not remove the scars of Jesus’ woundedness: the lasting marks of pain, disappointment, misunderstanding, rejection, betrayal, humiliation, abandonment, suffering and death. These wounds notwithstanding, Christ’s resurrection powerfully demonstrated that pain, sadness, suffering and injustice – as real as they were – did not, ultimately, wield the last word. While suffering was clearly a part of Jesus’ life, there was so much more to his life than suffering.
St. Francis de Sales wrote:
We must often recall that our Lord has saved us by his suffering and endurance, and that we must work out our salvation by sufferings and afflictions, enduring with all possible forbearance the injuries, denials and discomforts we meet. (Introduction to the Devout Life, Part III, Chapter 3)
All of us bear the wounds of failure, deception, betrayal, disappointment and loss. Our hearts, our minds, our memories – our souls – bear the scars to prove it. Like the apostles, we, too, are tempted to withdraw from others, to lock ourselves away in some secluded emotional or spiritual corner, living in fear of what other pain or disappointments may come our way. Of course, in withdrawing from life, we figuratively – in some cases, even literally – die.
Jesus clearly demonstrates in his own life that our wounds do not necessarily need to overwhelm or disable us. While these wounds may be permanent, they need not rob us of the power and promise of recovery, of renewal – of resurrection – unless we despair and allow ourselves to be defeated by the nails of negativity.
The wounds of our past certainly leave their mark in our present. They don’t necessarily determine the course of our future. Turn to the love of Jesus who knows what it means to be wounded and who shows us how to move through and beyond our wounds…and the scars they leave.
We’ll be talking about salvation by suffering during our chat session on Sunday. Here are some questions that will guide our reflection:
- After the Resurrection, Jesus’ glorified body could have been in any condition that God wanted. Why do you think God chose to keep the scars of Jesus? Why were none of the other wounds left?
- When the other disciples told Saint Thomas about the resurrection he had criteria for belief. He said: “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.” (John 20:25). Why do you suppose Saint Thomas assumed that Jesus would have scars? In other words, would it not have made more sense for Thomas to assume that Jesus’ body would be “perfect” with no wounds? What made Thomas so certain that Jesus would still have these marks?
- The scars of Jesus are a reminder of how God brings good out of evil, of how God can redeem anything. They also remind us that God is willing to endure anything in order to redeem us. How can we allow our past sins and failures to serve as such a reminder?
- In the apparitions of Jesus to Saint Faustina, our Lord specifically requested the first Sunday after Easter to be the day for celebrating His Divine Mercy by the veneration of the Divine Mercy image. How might the veneration of the Divine Mercy image and the Gospel story of Saint Thomas (John 20:24-29) correlate?
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