Today’s First Reading reminds us that Our Lord became man not because he was on a fact-finding mission, but because he wanted to make it easier for us to relate to him and, through him, to relate to our Heavenly Father. Christ did not come to earth in a comfortable moment of human history; his life was hard, compounded by how hard it must have been for someone who’d been in Heaven for all of eternity to come down and live on Earth. His life was also unfair: he was a just man his whole life, concerned only with others, and he was branded a criminal and executed.
We often identify more readily with someone who has struggled through life, and we empathize often with those who seem to have gotten a raw deal. When we suffer we too can draw closer to Our Lord because we know he suffered too. He wasn’t indifferent to our sufferings, and he still isn’t. To be fair to him we too should not be indifferent to his sufferings for us. Those sufferings became the source of our blessings. His Father turned his sufferings into blessings, and he’ll turn ours into blessings as well.
Is life hard? Bring it to Our Lord. He’s experienced hardship as well and will help turn that hardship into blessings.
Readings: Hebrews 5:1–10; Psalm 110:1–4; Mark 2:18–22. See also Friday after Ash Wednesday, 22nd Week in Ordinary Time, Friday, and 13th Week in Ordinary Time, Saturday.
