“….Through his suffering, my servant shall justify many, and their guilt he shall bear.” This simple prophecy of Isaiah offers us a rich source of reflection.
Through the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus, Jesus broke the power of sin and death and opened for us all the possibility of eternal life. We have been freed from our slavery to sin so that we can live in the liberty of the sons and daughters of God. Do we recognize our need for this liberation from sin? Do we recognize that we are sinners who need the transforming grace of Jesus Christ in order to diminish the power of sin in our lives and to live in the true freedom that comes from faithfulness to the way of God? What is the sin, or sins, that continue to exert the strongest hold on us, that continue to enslave us, and do we desire to be liberated from that slavery by the grace of the Risen Christ? The difficult truth is that sin is pleasurable and sometimes we lack the will to change the sinful tendencies of our lives because we prefer the transitory pleasure such sin gives us rather than accept the difficult change necessary to live in a way that will lead us to the true happiness that we desire.
The suffering and death of Jesus is significant for us in another way. Many persons experience real suffering in their lives. This suffering can be the result of illness, or the debilitation of age. Suffering can also be the result of the struggle to secure the basic necessities of life, or the absence of what one needs in order to live in dignity. In our suffering, we can sometimes think that God has abandoned us. In fact, God is closest to us when we are suffering because God knows how much we need God’s strength and God’s grace in our time of trial because God has experienced our suffering in God’s Son, Jesus. In the suffering and death of Jesus, we have a reminder that God knows what we suffer and so God is always with us in our suffering. God is always present in times of trial to give us the grace and strength we need.
How wonderful it is that we have a God who has such an immense love for us!

Fr. Mark Hallinan, S.J.