Passion of Christ, Comfort me

John 3:14-21

We are humans, and as many studies have shown, we tend to be risk-averse, we love to win and hate losing, we hate uncertainty and feeling exposed, in a nutshell: we run away from pain and the fear of pain paralyses us. What is the meaning of pain? Why do I suffer? The more I think about this the more I seem to crash into a cold reality: “Pain has no meaning”. Pain is the thing I keep confronting, rebelling against but mostly running away from. I am scared of pain. I am scared to be vulnerable, to come into the light because it is painful. So my life is a constant running away from the shadows of fear, the fear of being hurt.

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him”. God knows more than anyone how afraid I am to come into the light. How scared I am to stand up and shout: “I´m hurt , I am scared”. So I pretend nothing hurts me, like my heart is made of pain-proof fabric which nothing seems to permeate. I remain in the shadows because even if I prefer the light, the mere thought of what could happen if I embrace my broken-self is too painful. God knows this, He understands it so well and He doesn´t condemn us for this but rather, He was “dying” to tell us that we don´t need to keep running away from pain, that pain fulfills its meaning in Him.

Anima Christi
Soul of Christ, sanctify me.
Body of Christ, save me.
Blood of Christ, inebriate me.
Water from the side of Christ, wash me.
Passion of Christ, comfort me.
O good Jesus, hear me.
Within your wounds, hide me.
Let me never be separated from you.
From the malignant enemy, defend me.
In the hour of my death, call me,
And bid me come to you,
That with your saints I may praise you
Forever and ever. Amen.

“Passion of Christ, comfort me” Every time I reached this line of the Anima Christi prayer, when my mum and I would pray it together, I always felt it made no sense: passion of Christ …comfort me? I used to think, the passion of Christ is all but comforting: lashes, slaps, spits, insults, blood… comfort me? Now I cannot help smiling because I don´t think there is a better word that can contain the whole purpose of God´s plan for humanity.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life”. Jesus gave himself for the world, he gave himself for all. He took the pain of the world and he walked with it, with the cross, to the ultimate greatest pain of all: death. Yet the story does not end there: He died to beat death once and for all, so that we will have eternal life.

I guess I might have listened to this amazing story so many times that perhaps it had become that: a story.

“So that everyone may have eternal life”. God, You gave yourself for all, but in those all, there is me. There is me. All the pain that I have felt in my life it has already gone through You. And this was not just empathy, not just compassion, nor mercy. In your passion and death, my pain, my own pain went through You. And when I think of all the pain I have gone through in the years I am in this world, and the pain I probably get to experience in the years to come, I don´t know how Your body, mind and soul could bear it in the space of a few hours.

And when I multiply one person´s pain by the number of people I know, the number of people in this city, the number of people in this world… I begin to understand. That Your passion and death was an unimaginable explosion of the pain contained in the whole of humanity from the beginning of time, to eternity, all concentrated on that day, on those few hours. So all the pain that we have felt and will feel, you already took it off our shoulders and put it on yourself, two thousand years ago.

You love us so much, you love me so much, that you were prepared to go through that. So now I know that You gave meaning to my pain. And that my pain not only went though You but that You were able to take it all, take all my darkness, my shadows and my deaths, and that you transformed them into light and life. That every time I will feel hurt in my life, I will know that this same pain I am feeling, You already took it on yourself. That there is no one else in this world who can get what I am going through better than You can, because this exact pain went through You and You already did 99.9% of the work.

And now, I guess I need to figure out what to do with that 0.01% that remains. I think for once, I will try to take off the pain-proof fabric that has covered my heart for these past years, I will try to take off my mask, my armour and my sword. I will try to take off my runners and I will stop running away from fear, I will embrace my broken-self and jump into the light. I will shout so the whole world can hear, “I am hurt, I am scared… but I am alive because of YOU”