A Glimpse into Jesus’ Soul: On True Compassion

1. Martha: “Lord, you have healed so many strangers all over Galilee and Judea: now, the one you love is sick” (cf. John 11:3)

Lazarus might have thought: “Jesus is my friend, I know He will come.” And a few days later: “Jesus is my friend; there must be a reason for His absence!”

Jesus said: “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” He stayed two days longer where He was, and then said, “Let us go to Judea again… Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe” (cf. John 11:7,14)

“For your sake,” He said, because “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus” (John 11:5) and, from a human point of view, He would have liked to help His friend to not suffer… but God’s will was different.

Jesus did not take advantage of His fame or power to favour His relatives and friends. For the same reason that Jesus did not save Himself, He did not spare His mother from suffering at the foot of the cross, and He did not spare His best friend from death. By not saving Lazarus, Jesus was choosing to suffer one of the worst things in life: the suffering and death of the one we love.

Jesus, at his first coming, did not come to take away suffering. He came to repair our sins with His own sufferings, and to give meaning to our own crosses with His Cross. When He comes back, He will destroy death, but He did not do that at His first coming. Until He comes back, we must take up our cross and follow Him, so that one day we may be rewarded eternally in Heaven. We cannot be His disciples if we do not take up our cross (cf. Luke 14:27).

Delivering Lazarus from suffering was not the will of God for Jesus. Jesus had power to deliver Lazarus, but God’s will was different. Jesus was obedient: He preferred to suffer Himself and to endure the sufferings of His friend, rather than disobeying God.

2. Sometimes a suffering person may consider ending their sufferings by killing themselves. This is a distressing reality that may affect us Christians… Let me reflect upon this. People may have made wrong choices because they didn’t know better, or because their judgment was obscured by so much suffering and depression. People may have approved or agreed or even suggested something like this because they didn’t know. “If I had known!” We need to talk about this so that people know. This is not to judge anyone. I just want to give elements so that we may judge for ourselves what is right, so that we may do God’s will when the time comes.

A suffering person may say, “This is not life: physical suffering makes a human being worthless.” Instead, physical suffering is what allows human beings to show how great they are. Behind a winner, there is the suffering of training. Behind a victory, there is the suffering of heroes. Behind a martyr, there is the courage of a champion. A human being is not an animal only. What makes us good human beings is not the good of the body, comfort or pleasures: in fact, wretched people may have those things and still be the worst human beings on earth. On the contrary, a good human being is someone who can love, and you can do that both from your comfort chair and from the cross. And more, perhaps, from the cross.

A suffering person may think, “I am a burden!” Are you? Do we love people because of what we can get from them? Do we love people because we find pleasure in their presence? Do people have value for us only when they make us feel good? Is that love of neighbour or love of self? Is that love or selfishness? When people tell you that they feel like a burden, it is because they feel that, for you, the most important thing for you is to avoid your own suffering and, therefore, by getting rid of them, your life will be better.

When a suffering person says this, “I am a burden to you,” accepting it is not being compassionate. Agreeing with them is like saying, “You are right, you are a burden, an ugly thing to see: it would be better for me that you are not here.” Who could say that? Or who could say to a suffering person, “Yes, your life is worthless, because life is about having fun, like both good and evil people can do.” This is not compassion. Compassion is suffering with the one who suffers. Compassion is not avoiding physical suffering by destroying my neighbour’s sense of dignity, by making my neighbour suffer loneliness precisely when he or she needs me the most; compassion is not avoiding physical suffering and avoiding my own emotional suffering by making my neighbour feel worthless and causing him or her the ultimate pain.

What is the meaning of human suffering? It is a good question, but our response to suffering is not to avoid it, but to deal with it. Only by going through suffering, we overcome suffering. Dying is not losing a battle but becoming the hero we were meant to become from the day of our birth.