We’re almost there. The most intense part of Jesus’ journey into the depths of our broken world laying siege on our souls is about to begin. Palm Sunday and Holy Week are around the corner. How can we ready ourselves for the Graces He has prepared for us in this final push to Easter victory?

Prayerfully remembering our experiences is an excellent way to tenderize the sacred imagination of our hearts. We need to humbly bring all of ourselves to share in an infinitesimal drop of His pain and Glory

We bring our brokenness. We bring our hopes. We bring our doubts. We bring our questions. We bring our dreams. We bring our sorrows. We bring our repentance. We bring our love.

Consider taking a few minutes to reflect on these prompts:

1. Recall the times, the people and situations during this Lent when you felt our Lord challenging you.
   
   
2. Write about the times this Lent when you felt our Lord provided an unexpected agency of help, support, encouragement or insight that changed the way you were thinking about a challenging situation or how you responded to it.
   
   
3. Recount the times this Lent when the Lord used you as an instrument of His encouragement, Hope, and Love.

If you are open to sharing, please click here to be taken to a web form for sharing your experiences. Your stories will not automatically be published. You can also submit your stories anonymously.

These stories will witness the Hands of God touching us. Every story is a testament of the King of Love’s presence. Whether or not you share a story, let’s pause and hold each other in prayer:

Thank you, Lord, for what you are doing in our lives this Lenten season. We give praise and glory to your name for every grace and blessing; those noticed, those unseen, those yet to come, and those we did not accept. Help us to recall our stories. Fill us with your Beautiful Spirit. O Father, we lift up the stories of our brothers and sisters. May they be a pleasing offering to you. Illuminate the eyes of our hearts that we might grow in the ways of your Love from these experiences. Bless our brothers and sisters with tender supple spirits eager to know, love, and serve you and each other. We make this prayer in the name of your suffering, crucified, and risen Son, Jesus Christ. AMEN

Jesus’ Emotional and Spiritual Pain

To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
Romans 8: 6-8

We can take solace in Jesus’ ability to commiserate with our human emotions, not just from His all-knowing divinity but through His experiential humanity. We are children of an all-being God. What I mean is: God in taking the form of a human slave corroborates in the most intimate way with every nuanced and diverse intricacy of our physical and emotional conditions. Consider that God stops at nothing to satisfy His longing to unite Himself with us, now and forever. Every “sling and arrow of outrageous fortune,”[1] that befalls us is in the direct, immediate purview of Jesus.

Jesus’ emotional pain is a doorway into another one that’s beyond us. The spectrum and intensity of spiritual pain most of us experience is nothing compared to what Jesus experiences. I purposely used the word, “experience” in its present tense. Jesus still experiences spiritual pains when we reject His Mercy and Love by shutting down the temples of our hearts and spirits to His indwelling in us. Imagine Jesus’ zeal for His Father’s house (the temple in Jerusalem). Jesus’ consuming zeal for His Father’s house is not just about the physical temple with its blasphemous, irreverent, cheating money changers and vendors. Jesus is consumed with zeal in awakening the Kingdom of God. He is not to be crowned King of the Jews but crowned as King of Love in the temple of each one of our hearts/souls. Jesus is here to subject all things under the authority of God’s Glorious Sovereignty (in Hebrew Avinu Malkeinu)…

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[1] Hamlet, Act I, William Shakespeare

Take a few minutes and listen to this beautiful Jewish hymn of praise to God our King:

Of course, we experience spiritual pain. We might go through dry spells in our prayer life. We might become discouraged by our faltering battles with sin. We might hunger for consolations. We might wage futile wars against nagging doubts. We might become stuck in habits of thoughts, words, and actions that keep us from growing closer to God. We might endure ridicule or persecution. We might drift away from people who are turned off or suspicious of our faith.

Jesus’ spiritual pains begin where our most intense and difficult ones end. We’ll look at three examples. May this brief survey into Jesus’ emotional and spiritual pains incite your meditations. And may your mediations prepare you to enter more deeply into Holy Week’s Paschal mysteries.

 Jesus’ Life in Ministry

Our forty days of Lent is patterned on Jesus’ time in the desert at the beginning of His ministry. Jesus wastes no time entering the pathos of temptation. For the devil the stakes are high. That worthless liar will do anything to usurp God’s salvation plans. Scripture presents three great temptations. Yet, I think it’s safe to assume that Jesus was tempted throughout His time of solitude and fasting. Weariness was His companion. And the imminent intimations of the seemingly futile future outcome of His ministry was His nourishment. His emotions must have been fried. The magnitude of His mission was overwhelming. Jesus was drawn into a vast vortex of spiritual realities spanning terrestrial time and across heavenly dimensions.  How did Jesus experience the tensions between His obedience to His Father’s plans and the questioning interjections of His human thoughts?

The spiritual weight was crushing. Jesus survives. Prayer was Jesus’ weapon. That’s our cue. Prayer must also be our weapon during our battles with temptations, tests, trials, and tribulations. When Jesus’ forty days are over the angels minister to Him. The angels attend to Jesus’ physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. It’s a good reminder.  We can be assured of angels, our Blessed Mother, and the communion of saints to cover us in restorative blessings, prayers, and love.

Rewind the gospel stories. They’re filled with examples of Jesus’ emotional and spiritual pains. Jesus’ patience is divine. How many times did Jesus:

Maybe you hold a similar perception. Jesus appears imperturbable. The potential emotional turmoil from an intense onslaught of pressures impinging the Goodness of Jesus’ heart and mind is overwhelming. Jesus is human. He would have felt the debilitating effects of these emotions. The peace that Jesus has, the peace that Jesus embodied, and the peace that Jesus gives us, comes at a price: unimaginable spiritual pain.

These spiritual pains have their genesis in emotional ones. Throughout Jesus’ ministry there’s the ever-present precursor of the spiritual pain He will suffer during His Passion. This is the price Jesus paid, and this is the price Jesus continues to pay at every Eucharist. His Divine nature rises about the fleeting phantasmagoric waves of emotional pain. It’s love; but not any kind of love – it’s Divine Unconditional Love. God’s Unconditional Love is the antidote to the potential destructive power of emotional and spiritual pains.

Jesus’ Emotional & Spiritual Pain in the Garden of Gethsemane

In Part 1 of this Lenten reflection, we looked at Jesus’ physical pain in the Garden. Jesus transitions from His Passover celebration with His apostles and disciples to His lonely journey to the cross. As Jesus’ heart and soul set sail for the Passion, every human anchor is pulled up. His friends are overcome with nameless heavy grief. Even Jesus’ pleading rebuke is not enough to help Peter, John, and James remain vigilant while He prayed.

There’s a lovely scene from the 1970’s musical movie Godspell. The song “On The Willows There,” depicts Jesus intimately and wordlessly interacting with His closest followers. Jesus enacts His special connection with each person. Joy and sorrow fumble over each other. Consider giving this short video a watch – in a simple poetic way I find it very moving.

Imagine every person you care about disconnecting from you. Jesus’ friends cannot help themselves. It’s safe to assume that none of us would fare any better. Our Teacher, our Shepherd, our King, our Lord, and our God will be severed from us. In the Catholic liturgies of the Holy Tridium we do our best to remember this moment. After the consecration at the celebration of Holy Thursday’s Last Supper mass no hosts are consecrated until the Easter vigil on Saturday.

On Good Friday there’s no place or time on earth that we celebrate the consecration. By observing this abstinence, we recognize that what we need and desire most is Him. Jesus gives all of Himself to free us. We’re left staring at the bottomless dark abyss without Him, in our preparation to celebrate the Resurrection Joy. So, when Jesus’ friends cannot accompany Him into the depths of His anguish it’s not a willful act on their part. No. It was the emotional necessity of the moment. May our remembrance of this emotional epoch of pain which transmutes into ineffable spiritual pain, unite us always with Him, and every person who faces pain in solitude.

Jesus must also pull up the anchor of His mother. Mary knows Him the best.  What sadness they share. I’ll never forget Scuba diving on a wreck early in my diving days. It was dark, cold, and murky.  I should not have been diving on this wreck given my limited experience. The worst thing you can do underwater is panic. Panicking leads to a host of problems that quickly snowball into fatal behaviors (i.e. ripping off one’s mask, rocketing to the surface thereby incurring embolisms from rapid changes in pressure, or decompression sickness aka the “bends”). I got lost on the wreck while dealing with equipment issues. I felt panic. I remember emotionally screaming into my regulator, “Mommy, mommy, mommy.” I got a hold of myself by using breathing and self-soothing techniques. I was lucky. I adverted an accident but this experience of needing my mother as an anchor gives me a peek into the human emotions of panic and anxiety. Jesus was not immune to this kind of emotional pain. Like us He longed for consoling anchors.

Jesus’ anguish becomes excruciating spiritual pain. “In his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground.” (Luke 22: 44). Jesus faces the infernal weight of sin: past, present, and future. Drawing upon the vision of Catherine Ann Emerich (see Part 1 of this three-part reflection), Mel Gibson’s The Passion, illustrates Jesus’ battle with the devil…

Evil is insidious and opportunistic. The devil incites doubt. He wants Jesus to be disobedient to the Father’s Will but Jesus leans on His trust of His Father’s Love.

though he was in the form of God,
    did not regard equality with God
    as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
    taking the form of a slave,
    being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
    he humbled himself
    and became obedient to the point of death—
    even death on a cross.
(Philippians 2: 6-9)

Jesus bypasses the limitations of His visible emotional strength and invokes His unseen divine strength to accept sin’s enormity. Before He stands up to face His betrayer and His arrest, the angels minister to Him (just as they did when He finished His forty days in the desert). I recently read a reflection by an author (and pardon for me not knowing their name) who had a wonderful suggestion. After viewing all our sins, the angels may have comforted Jesus by showing Him the face, heart, and soul of His future saints – that’s you and me. In other words, every person who will eventually be in full communion with Him in heaven. Think about it: you and I were with Jesus in the Garden comforting Him. Only God!

Jesus’ Spiritual Pain on the Cross

When Jesus is hanging on the cross His spiritual pain dwarfs His unimaginable physical and emotional pain. In the garden Jesus experiences spiritual visions of every sin but on the cross He experiences and tastes the nasty fruits and infinite reverberating consequences of every sin. For three hours demons lacerated, bludgeoned, and burned Jesus with every sin. Their furious lusting rancor feasted on every drop of our Lamb’s Precious Blood.

Jesus cries out,

Jesus experiences the spiritual pain above every pain. Jesus experiences life without Himself. The sum of all sins buries Jesus in the bowels of endless death – our eternal separation from God. How can Jesus endure this spiritual pain? If Jesus allows every sin to focus its destructive powers into a single point upon Himself, then He also brings the Singularity and Truth of His Godhead which is Love. Love is Supreme. Even in taking the form of a slave – our human form – our indentured warped broken form – He cannot deny His unchangeable Nature. Jesus’ victory is Love. Excuse my French but imagine all those sorry assed demonic bastards in Hades when Jesus says, “It is finished.” (John 19: 30). Why do you ask? Because it’s truly finished – sin and death no more. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are rejoined in their Trinitarian Godhead unleashing the Endless Light of eternal LOVE.

For all His pain: physical, emotional, and spiritual we say THANK YOU LORD!!!!!!!

CLOSING PRAYER

Jesus was Hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.”
Mark 11: 12-14

Father of Mercy and Goodness, Jesus destroyer of sin and death, and beautiful Spirit, Creator Blest, giver of infinite opportunities to participate in God’s Love, we lift up our voices in praise and thanksgiving. We enter Holy Week with humble and contrite hearts. We are your “Jerusalem people” – a people set apart – a people beholden to your covenant. We are ready to dry your tears of sorrow. May we console you. Embolden us in our penitential prayers and acts of charity. Invite us deeper into the mystery of your emotional and spiritual pain. We desire to venerate your sacrifice of Unconditional Love. Count us among the souls that are free of the “fig tree” curse. Accept our fiat to do the Father’s Will and produce in us your fruits of Love. Grab our hearts and minds this week with new insights. Lavish us with every blessing and grace we need to embrace the Joy of Easter as new people. Father, gather us into your heart, Jesus turn our darkness into your Light, and beautiful Spirit soak us in the Living Waters of the Resurrection. “I love the Lord, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy.”* AMEN

*Psalm 116: 2