IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
One of the saints who speaks to me is Therese of Lisieux, commonly known as the Little Flower. This wasn’t love at first sight. For years I was put off and left cold and uninterested by how her person and her image have become encrusted in an overly saccharine piety. She was too sweet, too pious. Not a saint for me! That changed, thanks to a friend who told me, “Don’t read books about her – read her!” I read her and found in her a soul friend.

Who is Therese of Lisieux? She was a Carmelite nun who died from tuberculous in 1897. She was only twenty-four years old when she died, and as a Carmelite nun hidden away in a convent in rural France, she died in anonymity, probably known by fewer than a hundred people. However, during the last two years of her life, as she lay dying from tuberculous, she kept several diaries. After her death, her Carmelite sisters sent her unpublished diaries to a few other convents, intending to let a small circle of religious women know of her death and a little about her life.

The rest is history. The manuscripts were leaked to a wider public and in less than ten years, printing presses were literally having trouble meeting the demand for her autobiography. Her little convent in Lisieux was receiving more than five hundred letters a day, and people from all over the world were beginning to come to Lisieux on pilgrimage. A hundred and thirty years later, little has changed. She remains extraordinarily popular.

Why? Why this perennial intrigue about Therese? Because there is something about her that touches the soul in a particularly empathic way. How so?

Therese had an anomalous background that produced an extraordinary character. Her life as a child was in many ways tragic. Her mother got sick at the time of Therese’s birth and was unable to care for her during the crucial first year of her life. She was cared for by a nurse and an aunt. As a one-year-old she was returned to her mother, but her mother was already terminally ill and when Therese was four, her mother died. Therese then chose her older sister, Pauline, to be her new mother. Five years later, Pauline entered the convent and as a nine-year-old Therese again lost a mother.

Shortly after this she took ill and almost died. This was triggered by a visit to Pauline who was then a Carmelite nun. Together with her three other sisters and her father, she had gone to visit Pauline in her convent. After Pauline had spent some time focused on her little sister, she naturally became preoccupied in adult conversation. Left out, in sheer frustration, little Therese stood right in front of her big sister and, shaking her dress, began to cry.

“What’s the matter?” asked Pauline. “You didn’t notice!” cried Therese, “I’m wearing the dress you made me!”

She then became disconsolate and on returning home took to bed and for some weeks; despite the best efforts of various doctors and every kind of cajoling by her family, hovered between life and death. Eventually she recovered. Such was the tragedy and oversensitivity of her childhood.

Yet, and this is the great anomaly, as a child, Therese was doted on and loved in a way that few children ever are. Her father, her sisters and her extended family considered her their little queen and she was cherished and made to feel extraordinarily precious and unique. Her sister Celine photographed her every move. Few children ever grow up as nurtured in love and affirmation as did Therese.

And her personality bore out the effects of both the tragedy and the love. On the one side, she could be heavy, dark, withdrawn, and otherworldly. She made easy friends with mortality, was a mystic of darkness, the austere adult, the little girl-woman, who, wounded early, grew up fast. But, on the other side, she always remained the magical child, Cinderella, who, because she was so loved and graced, developed a very robust self-esteem, a confidence and a capacity to love as few others ever have.

So loved as child, a part of her remained ever the little girl, the puella, the incarnation of childlikeness, innocence, and gaiety. Only a Therese of Lisieux could end all her letters with the phrase: I kiss you with my whole heart!

In a soul so formed lies her mystique, that is, her unique combination of depth, insight, and other worldliness, even as she desperately clings to the tiniest gifts from her family and every small token of earthly affection. Only a soul so formed could, at age twenty-two, have the complexity and wisdom to write a mystical and theological treatise that rivals that of great theological doctors, and only a soul so formed could be both a study in hyper-sensitivity and human resilience.

A saint so pathologically complex can be a soul friend to our own complex souls.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a professor of spirituality at Oblate School of Theology and award-winning author.)

GUEST COLUMN
By Father Anthony D. Andreassi
In this continuing series on the origins of Catholicism in the 50 states, the story now turns to the lower South and the states of Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. What began as a fragile missionary presence with the Spanish and French would only gradually develop into a more established Church.
Catholic roots in Georgia reach back well before the English colonies, to the era of Spanish mission activity along the southeastern coast. 

Nearly two decades before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth, Franciscan missionaries left Spain to evangelize and minister to the Indigenous peoples of the region. Living among the Guale along the Georgia coast, they preached the Gospel and celebrated the sacraments, while insisting on Christian norms of marriage in contrast to the practice of polygamy.
  
Their faithfulness brought them into conflict with local leaders, and in September 1597, five friars were killed, in part for upholding Church teaching against polygamy. Recognized now as the Georgia Martyrs, these brave missionaries are set for beatification on October 31 of this year, and their witness stands as the earliest chapter in the Catholic story of Georgia.

The creation of the Diocese of Charleston in 1820, encompassing the Carolinas and Georgia, underscored how limited Catholic life remained in the region. In Georgia, the first parish, Most Holy Trinity in Augusta, had been founded only a decade earlier.

Moving down the coast to Florida, the Catholic story begins earlier than anywhere else in what would become the United States. Spanish expeditions in the first half of the sixteenth century sought to establish colonies, but a lasting presence only came in 1565 with the founding of St. Augustine, the first permanent European settlement in what is now the United States.

There, the mission of Nombre de Dios was established with a secular priest as its first pastor. The missionary impulse quickly expanded, leading to the founding of the first Catholic hospital in 1598 and a Franciscan seminary in 1605. In 1606, Bishop Juan de las Cabezas de Altamirano of Cuba became the first bishop to set foot in territory that would one day be part of the United States.

As was true in most other places in the Americas, missionary life was often difficult in what would become the state of Florida. At times, Mass could not be celebrated for months due to the lack of bread or wine. Yet the work continued.  
A Franciscan missionary who arrived in 1595 labored among the coastal Timucua and produced a grammar and dictionary of their language, aiding the spread of the faith.

Over the centuries, as colonial control shifted, the Church in Florida was administered in various ways, often under bishops in Cuba and elsewhere, until 1870, when the Diocese of St. Augustine was established to encompass the entire state. Today, with its rapid growth in the twentieth century, Florida is home to seven dioceses serving a diverse Catholic population of over 1.9 million.

Moving west along the Gulf Coast, the Catholic story in Alabama began to take shape in the early eighteenth century, when much of the Mississippi Valley, including present-day Alabama, formed part of the French Empire.

The first parish was established in Mobile in 1703, with Father Henri Roulleaux de La Vente, a priest from the Diocese of Bayeux in France, serving as its first pastor after arriving by way of Canada.

In these early years, Mass and other sacraments were celebrated in the chapel of Fort Louis until a parish church was built outside the fortifications in 1708.

For much of the next century and a half, Catholic life remained largely confined to the Gulf Coast, with limited expansion inland. A more stable institutional footing came in 1829 with the establishment of the Diocese (today Archdiocese) of Mobile.

For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Alabama remained overwhelmingly Protestant, and Catholic growth was slow. Parishes gradually spread inland, with foundations in Tuscaloosa in 1844 and Birmingham in 1872 marking that expansion. In recent decades, however, the rise of the Sun Belt and immigration from outside the United States have strengthened the Church’s presence, and today about 6.8 percent of Alabamians are Catholic.

Just to the west, Mississippi presents a closely related but distinct chapter in the Catholic story of the Gulf South. Catholic beginnings in Mississippi date to 1682, when French explorers descended the river to its mouth and claimed the region for France, accompanied by Father Zenobius Membré, an Augustinian Recollect, who celebrated what is likely the first recorded Mass in what would become the nation’s twentieth state.  

French settlement followed in 1699 at Old Biloxi, where priests ministered to the first European colonists. Missionary work quickly extended to Native peoples, where a chapel was built among the Houma, and Father Jacques Gravier performed what is likely the first recorded baptism in Mississippi.

In 1779, control of the region passed to Spain, and in 1788, a church dedicated to the Holy Savior was built in Natchez, on the site where St. Mary Basilica stands today. Despite this early foundation, Catholic life remained fragile. By the time Pope Gregory XVI established the Diocese of Natchez (today Jackson) in 1837, encompassing the entire state, there was not a single Catholic church or resident priest, and the first bishop named to the see declined the appointment.

Stability came only in 1841, when John Joseph Chanche of Baltimore accepted the role, becoming the first bishop to establish a lasting Catholic presence in Mississippi. 
Like neighboring Alabama, Mississippi has seen significant Catholic growth in recent decades, and today about 110,000 Catholics are served by the Dioceses of Jackson and Biloxi.

The Catholic story of the lower South reflects a long journey from mission to a mature presence. Early efforts by Spanish and French missionaries laid foundations that would only slowly develop into a stable Church. Today’s growing Catholic communities stand as a testament to that enduring, if often overlooked, history.

(Father Anthony D. Andreassi, a priest of the Brooklyn Oratory of St. Philip Neri, holds a doctorate in history from Georgetown University. His research and writing have focused on the American Catholic community. He is on the staff of the Oratory parishes of Assumption and St. Boniface in Brooklyn, New York.)

FROM THE HERMITAGE
By sister alies therese
At breakneck speed, Kenyan runner Sabastian Sawe completed the London Marathon in 1:59:30, becoming the first person to finish the 26-mile trek in under two hours. Closely behind was Ethiopian runner Kejelcha, just 11 seconds later. That is traveling one mile in 4:33, 26 times! Seriously moving, those fellas put a new stamp on the word – traveling.

Birds travel, butterflies travel, glaciers travel and indeed people travel. I have a friend, soon to be 80, who wants us to do Route 66! Why not, you ask? Well, she lives far away and would have to travel a considerable distance before we could even begin. Anyway, Route 66, being a famous road with sites and motels, food and people, has welcomed travelers for years. A secular sort of pilgrimage. A good icon for that might be the original drawing of Winnie-the-Pooh (on sale for $12,000) tracking the Woozles all over the place. (He will be 95 this year. Oh my.)

There are lots of variations in travel, as you well know. For example, being caught in traffic – moving and not moving, i.e., stranded – long lines at the airport or even being stuck in a grocery line behind people with long questions or a new checker.

How many times have you been stuck? Your inner life feels empty, your home life is boring and you are going nowhere. Or, on the other hand, with some excitement, consider graduation, the NFL draft or entering a monastery! All these cause us to go from one place, one kind of life, into another that is only vaguely familiar. We learn the rules of the road – a Green Book of sorts – and begin to be transformed by our new way of life, at least if we stay long enough … or maybe we move on. Perhaps we will travel the road to St. James?

Historically, we know of those who traveled under duress – on the Trail of Tears or the long trek of slavery. People ripped from their former lives and forced into another, miles from home. Think too of the troubles of travel – bandits, wrecks and weather. Our journeys are not all that easy, even when we don’t seem in harm’s way.

When we read, we travel. When we pray, we travel. When we write, create art or music or when we imagine, we travel. What takes you from one place to another? Well, a truck, a cart, a horse or a car moves us forward, but many in our world today are traveling away from war and violence in tiny boats or struggling to walk on foot. If you have ever been near the border, say south of Tucson, you might have noticed something thrown away, hidden in bushes and trees – traveling clothes discarded, especially shoes, often those of small children. One must realize that the only way people are moving toward safety and some sort of economic or social improvement away from violence is by traveling on foot. I can’t even walk to the DG to get a bottle of milk. How far, you ask? Well, maybe 10 blocks or so … ugh.

Traveling is also a favorite advertisement for most new cars and uses the beauty of America on wide-open roads, or a flight to Paris, or that moon shot and back to entice us to move from the comfortable zones where we consider ourselves safe and in place, to explore the universe God has so generously created. In the Hebrew Bible we discover the long trek of the Israelites – 40 years of wandering in the desert, looking for a promised land. A journey that could have been traveled on foot in about 11 days took 40 years. There are plenty of Scriptural references to traveling, but my favorites are the flight into Egypt with the tiny Child, the walk to Emmaus and the care of the Good Shepherd who walks with us, leads us and brings us to safety.

There are also other kinds of traveling – disease, for example. We go one day from being quite well to having broken bones, a tumor or the flu. Indeed, one of the most pernicious diseases that causes us to travel from well-being into uncertainty is dementia. It is even called a disease of progression and is, no doubt, a difficult trip not only for the traveler, but for friends and family close by.

Finally, a woman named Melissa Lucio has been on death row – a horrid place to travel to – in Texas for 17 years and four years ago was to be executed. However, she received a stay after the trial judge recommended overturning her conviction and death sentence. There is a long travel from cell to death chamber … and indeed from guilty to innocent! However, here is the question: Why is she still there? She is in the hands of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, and they will decide whether to accept the judge’s recommendation and overturn her wrongful conviction and death sentence. Why has it taken them four years, to date, to reach a favorable decision? Their traveling seems ever so slow …

As you plan your vacation, travel sports event or visit to Granny in Maine, remember our lives are one long walk to Emmaus, one pilgrim adventure after another toward our final place of welcome. We need to pay attention, however, to what St. Gregory the Great had to say about travelers: “Don’t be a foolish traveler, distracted by the pleasant meadows you are passing and forgetting where you are going.”

I had a novice mistress once who frequently said, “Be a constant and joyful companion on the journey.” Here is our opportunity, as we travel together with Jesus, to comfort and console, to be a source of cheer and joy and to be attentive to our odometer as it clocks up the miles.

Happy trails … blessings.

(sister alies therese is a canonical hermit who prays and writes.)

ORDINARY TIMES
By Lucia A. Silecchia
As April exploded into the exuberance of a long-awaited spring, many welcomed her arrival with great joy.

Truly, the glory of Easter, buds bursting from their hiding places, ever brighter evenings and the return of birds and butterflies are all great signs of good things to come. After what was, for much of the country, an extra-cold winter, the coming of spring seems particularly appreciated.
April also heralds the arrival of a new baseball season.

This occasion is neither a liturgical event nor a wonder of nature. It is fanatically observed by some, unnoticed by others, and a mystery to others. With post-season games lengthening the baseball season long into the fall, Opening Day seems to have arrived very quickly for some, while others lament that it has taken so long to arrive.

Yet, when a new season begins – for baseball or, indeed, for any other sport – there is a feeling like no other that also has something to teach about life.

There is a wonderful sense that anything is possible in the months ahead. As the season begins, no team has yet fallen behind. No players have yet been injured. The hope of being a World Series champion seems possible in a way that it does not after the season moves on and standings start to settle.

More importantly, the past does not seem to matter. The errors, missed chances and wasted opportunities of last season are left behind and injuries have had several months to heal. As someone who roots loyally for a team that consistently pulls defeat from the jaws of victory, the ability to put last season behind is a refreshing reset.

Perhaps there is something to be learned about life from America’s favorite pastime.

The willingness to start anew and to let go of the past is a challenge and a blessing that God gives us each day, indeed, each moment of our lives.

Like a baseball team rebounding from a bad year, we all have the chance to look forward to the future and not only to the past. Certainly, there is always much to learn from past mistakes and bad judgement. Certainly, there is much we can do to make tomorrow better than yesterday. But in the constant care of a loving God, we can, like the teams we root for, start anew – not merely once a year, but anytime.

Crowds of fans may not cheer when we succeed. Headlines will not proclaim our victories. Championship rings and celebratory parades will not be ours. Indeed, for many of us, the pasts we leave behind and the new beginnings we forge for the future may be known only to ourselves and to God.

And that is good. For we have a far better hope in a God who promises that “whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.” (2 Cor. 5:17) What better time than this Easter season to celebrate that all is new, that what is old has passed away and that the new has come!

To my favorite team, good luck!

To my sisters and brothers, may you be blessed with many new beginnings every day of your ordinary times.

(Lucia A. Silecchia is Professor of Law at the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law. Email her at silecchia@cua.edu.)

REFLECTIONS ON LIFE
By Melvin Arrington
Our modern culture tells us beauty is in the eye of the beholder, that it’s subjective, something each person can determine for himself. But in the Catholic tradition that which is genuinely beautiful can be verified objectively because it has been so imbued with harmony, order and splendor, that personal preference no longer has any bearing on the matter. Simply put, the eye and the ear have to be trained to recognize and appreciate the beautiful.

One of my first discoveries of the beauty of classical (actually baroque) music occurred during my sophomore year of college, long before I became Catholic. One afternoon while passing through the auditorium to get to a class, I happened upon the college choir and orchestra rehearsing for a concert. As I entered the auditorium and made my way down the side aisle, I was so moved by the majestic harmony of sounds and words that I quietly eased into a seat and sat there captivated by the heavenly music. Later, I learned that what had caused me to be late to class was a portion of Handel’s Messiah, specifically the part taken from the ninth chapter of Isaiah that deals with the birth of Christ: “For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulder; and His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.” Every time I hear that selection it brings up memories of that day when I stumbled upon something truly beautiful.

On the other hand, my enjoyment of Gregorian chant and the use of Latin during Mass developed over a period of time. Neither chant nor the Latin language appealed to me at all when I was a Protestant, but after being received into the Catholic Church I slowly gained an appreciation for that ancient musical form and idiom. Although I have no technical knowledge of music theory, I’m fascinated by the way the voices of the chanters resonate as they blend together in offering up prayers to God. During reconciliation services at my church, recordings of Gregorian chant play softly over the speaker system, providing a soothing backdrop that aids prayer and reflection and enhances the overall experience of those in attendance.

Because Latin is the official language of the Church, most of our traditional prayers are translations from the Latin original. Despite my low-level proficiency in the language, I’ve found abundant joy in learning to sing various parts of the Mass – the Gloria, the Sanctus, the Agnus Dei, and the Marian antiphons – in that age-old tongue. When we pray and sing these prayers in that so-called dead language, we unite our voices to those of the great saints across the centuries. But in the final analysis, the beauty of the liturgy comes across no matter what language is spoken. I discovered this to be true several years ago when I visited a foreign country and found out how relatively easy it was to follow along during the Mass, even though I didn’t know the language.

St. Augustine wrote, in his Confessions: “Late have I loved Thee, o Beauty, ever ancient, ever new; late have I loved Thee.” He was speaking about God in the context of his conversion experience when he was in his 30s, but a beauty “ever ancient, ever new” might also apply to our Catholic faith and to the Church itself.
Everything about the Catholic Church draws me in, beginning with its history that stretches all the way back to antiquity. I find satisfaction in knowing that I belong to the one and only Church Jesus founded back in the first half of the first century rather than to a religious congregation established in the sixteenth century or later by a Protestant reformer. As St. John Henry Newman said: “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.”

When you enter a Catholic Church you leave behind all the noise and ugliness of the outer world – the hatred, violence, greed, political shenanigans – and enter into a sacred precinct, a place where heaven and earth meet. Look around inside and you’ll find yourself surrounded by beauty in its many forms, shapes, colors, and sounds.

It’s impossible to catalog everything about Catholicism that exerts a pull on me, but any listing must include Catholic art, architecture, music, literature, the tandem of Scripture and Tradition, the concept of the Church as Christ’s Bride (all brides are beautiful!), the communion of saints, the treasury of Catholic prayers and devotions, the Sacraments, statues, icons, stained glass windows, relics, incense, holy water, candles, vestments, and the in cense, holy water, candles, vestments, and the symbolism that can be found in practically everything in the Catholic Church (although, as we know, everything is not just a symbol). All these things are beautiful in themselves, but they are also reflections of the perfect and eternal Beauty of God.

Inside the Church the most beautiful element of all is, of course, the Blessed Sacrament, whether exposed in the monstrance on the altar or reposed in the tabernacle. During Adoration, one can experience the full range of a church’s beauty – including the splendor of silence.

We can also find heroic beauty in the social teachings of the Church, especially those that remind us of our obligations to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and welcome the stranger. Consider how St. Teresa of Calcutta dedicated her life to care for the poorest of the poor, those Our Lord called “the least of these my brethren.” Her constant desire was, as she put it, to “do something beautiful for God.”

What things did I do today that could be called beautiful? That’s a question we all need to ask ourselves every evening before going to bed. Christ paid the ultimate price. I should at least be willing to make some small daily sacrifice in order to advance the Kingdom, something that would be pleasing to the One Who is the source of all beauty.

(Melvin Arrington is a Professor Emeritus of Modern Languages for the University of Mississippi and a member of St. John Oxford.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
With the resurrection of Jesus, time started over. Simply put, up until Jesus rose from the dead all things that died stayed dead. After Jesus’ resurrection, nothing stays dead anymore. Time has begun anew.
Luke’s Gospel account of the resurrection begins with the words “on the morning of the first day.” This is a double reference. He is referring to Sunday, the first day of the week, but he is also referring to the first day of a new creation. With the resurrection, time has started over. In fact, the world measures time by that day. We are in the year 2026 since that morning when Jesus rose from the dead.

From the beginning of time until Jesus’ resurrection, everything mortal died and remained in death. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, in the story of Adam and Eve and their fall from grace, we are given to believe that originally humans were not intended to die. In this view, death entered the world through the sin of our first parents. Today, for sound theological and scientific reasons, the Adam and Eve story is considered, like the other “in the beginning” stories in Genesis, to be more metaphoric and archetypal than literal. To be human is to be mortal.

Irrespective as to whether you take the Adam and Eve story literally and see death because of their sin or not, the bottom line is the same: From our first parents onward, everything that died stayed dead.

That changed with the resurrection of Jesus. When God raised him from the dead, creation was changed at its very roots. Nature changed. A dead body was brought to new life. Impossible? Yes, except that time started over! There was a new first day, a new Genesis, a second time when we can say, “in the beginning.”

And nothing stays dead now because Jesus is the “first fruit” of this new creation. What happened to him now happens to us. We too will not stay dead but will rise to new life. Moreover, this isn’t just true for us as humans. It’s also true for the earth itself and everything on it. Jesus came to save the world, not just the people living in the world.

St. Paul makes this clear in his Epistle to the Romans when he writes that all creation, physical creation, has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth and – it itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. (Romans 8:21-23)

Our planet earth, like our human body, is also mortal. It is dying too. As we know, the sun will eventually burn out and that will spell the death of our planet. Our planet also needs to be resurrected, and scripture assures us that it will.

What all this means stretches our imagination beyond its limits. Does this mean that animals will also have eternal life? Will our beloved pets be with us in heaven? Will plants enter heaven? Will the whole cosmos and our planet earth be transformed and enter heaven?

The answer is yes, though how this will happen is beyond our imagination. Our human mind is too limited. This is impossible to imagine, except, except that God who is the Father of Jesus Christ is ineffable, beyond imagination, and can do the unimaginable, including transforming all things into new life.

The Gospel of John has a particularly poignant text which links the resurrection of Jesus to the original creation as described in Genesis. John tells us that in his first resurrection appearance to the apostles, Jesus finds them huddled in fear inside a room with the doors locked. The resurrected Jesus goes right through the locked doors, enters their midst, greets them, shows them his hands and his side, and then breathes on them. (John 20:21)

This breathing out by Jesus parallels what happened at the original creation when God breathed over the formless void, and light began to separate from darkness and creation began to take shape.

After the resurrection, Jesus breathes on his disciples and for the second time in history light begins to separate from darkness. The confusion, fear, timidity, and the weaknesses of the apostles, their “formless void,” their darkness, begins to separate from the new light brought by the resurrection, namely, the eternal light of charity, joy, peace, patience, goodness, the fruits of the Holy Spirit.

So, it’s appropriate to say that with the resurrection of Jesus, time started over. There was a new first day where light again separated from darkness. The resurrection of Jesus is the most radical thing that has occurred since God originally said – let there be light! – nearly fourteen billion years ago. The earth itself and everything on it, humans, animals, plants, and minerals, and the earth itself, are now given life beyond death.

Until the resurrection of Jesus, all things that died stayed dead. This is no longer true. Time has started over.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a professor of spirituality at Oblate School of Theology and award-winning author.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
I heard this story from a renowned theologian who prefers I don’t use his name in sharing this, though the story speaks well of his theology.

He was giving a lecture and at one point stated that God didn’t want Jesus to suffer like he did. A woman in the audience immediately raised her voice: “Do you mean that?” Not knowing whether this was an objection or an affirmation, he invited the woman to speak to him at the break. Approaching him at the break, she repeated her question: “Do you mean that? Do you believe that God didn’t want Jesus to suffer as he did?” He replied that indeed he meant it. God didn’t want Jesus to suffer as he did. Her response: “Good, then I can pray again. I struggle to pray to a God who needs this type of suffering to pay some kind of debt.”

Why did Jesus suffer? Was his suffering needed to pay a debt that only a divine being could pay? Was the original sin of Adam and Eve so great an offense to God that no human sincerity, worship, altruism, or sacrificial suffering could appease God? Indeed, does God ever need to be appeased?

The idea that Jesus needed to suffer as he did to somehow appease God for our sins lies deep within our popular understanding of Jesus’ suffering and death, and there are seemingly strong references in support of that in scripture and in the theology of atonement. What these suggest is that some quota of suffering was needed to pay the debt for sin, and Jesus’ suffering paid that debt. And since the debt was huge, Jesus’ suffering had to be severe.

But, how much of this is metaphorical and how much of this is to be taken literally? Here’s another take on why Jesus chose to accept suffering as he did.

He did it to be in full solidarity with us. He accepted to suffer in such an extreme way so that no one would be able to say: “Jesus didn’t suffer in a way that I have! I have suffered in more painful and humiliating ways than he ever did!”

Well, let’s examine Jesus’ suffering in the light of that challenge.

First, in his life before his passion and death, he suffered the pain of poverty, misunderstanding, hatred, betrayal, plus the loneliness of celibacy. As well, on the cross he suffered a dark night of faith. But these are ordinary human sufferings. It’s in his passion and death that his sufferings become more extraordinary.

Jesus was crucified. Crucifixion was designed by the Romans as more than just capital punishment. It was also designed to inflict the optimum amount of pain that a person could absorb. That’s why they would sometimes give morphine or some other drug to the one being crucified, not to dull his pain, but to keep him conscious so that he would suffer longer.

Worse still, crucifixion was designed to utterly humiliate the one being crucified. Crucifixions were public events, and the one being crucified was stripped naked so his genitals would be exposed and in the spasms as he was dying, his bowels would loosen. Utter humiliation. This is what Jesus suffered.

Moreover, scholars speculate (albeit there is no direct evidence for this) that on the night between his arrest and his execution the next day he was sexually assaulted by the soldiers who had him in their custody. This speculation grounds itself on two things: a hunch, since sexual assault was common in such situations; and to suffer this kind of humiliation would be Jesus’ ultimate solidarity with human suffering.

Perhaps no humiliation compares with the humiliation suffered in sexual assault. If Jesus suffered this, and the hunch is that he did, that puts him in solidarity with one of the deepest of all human pains. Everyone who has suffered this humiliation has the consolation of knowing that Jesus may have suffered this too.
Why did Jesus accept to suffer as he did? Why, as the Office of the Church puts it, did he become sin for us?

Whatever the deep mystery and truth that lie inside the motif of paying a debt for our sins and atoning for human shortcomings, the deeper reason Jesus chose to accept suffering as he did was to be in full solidarity with us, in all our pain and humiliation.

Jesus came from our ineffable God, brought a human face to the divine, and taught us what lies inside God’s heart. And in doing this, he took on our human condition completely. He didn’t just touch human life, he entered it completely, including the depth of human pain.

Indeed, there are particular sufferings that perhaps Jesus didn’t explicitly experience (racism, sexism, exile, physical disability) but in his dark night of faith on the cross and in his humiliation in his crucifixion, he suffered in a way that no one can say: “Jesus didn’t suffer as I have suffered!”

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a professor of spirituality at Oblate School of Theology and award-winning author.)