Transcription
God, if you love me, why is suffering a question perhaps that doesn't find that right answer that we all would like to find, a sufficiently convincing explanation that can pull us out of the embarrassment that such a question creates? Because when one speaks of suffering while not suffering, one has the idea of having understood, of having understood the lesson. But the fundamental problem arises when one suffers and realizes that suffering does not tolerate reasoning, that suffering does not tolerate the mathematics of thoughts placed one next to the other, that it feels disgust for words, even the most beautiful, the sweetest. Indeed, perhaps the only alphabet that knows how to speak of suffering is that of silence. Silence is the only great word that manages to contain the great mystery of suffering. That is why this evening I will not bring you some of my ideas or my vision of things, but I will let myself be helped by the only reliable thing that we Christians have, which is the Gospel. And we will realize how the Gospel, more than answering this question, puts us in a particular position to intensely live this question. It positions us, with our hearts turned in a completely new way, to ask ourselves this question, thinking about it from another point of view. Because, you know, everything starts from that great mystery which is love, the mysterious affair of love. And no matter how much faith we may have or not have, love is something that instead crosses our lives in whatever season it may be. And all of us, when we think of love, always think of it as something that might protect us. The first idea we have of love is this: love, if it exists, must protect me. But the two great words that describe love are protection and freedom. Love creates freedom. But the first, the first great word that we encounter in love is that of protection, because we all dream of feeling that we belong to someone, we all dream that someone will gather our lives, we all want a sense of belonging. All of us, when we think of love, always think of someone who fills our lives, who is within our lives and completely changes them. That sense of belonging is the great thing for which we all wake up in the morning, even when we stop saying it out loud, even when we can no longer verbalize it or be aware of it. I think that this is the reason why, at a certain point, God stops speaking as he speaks in the Old Testament, and no longer speaks through images, through prophecies, no longer speaks through signs. But God speaks through the presence of his son Jesus, who comes into the world. It is a winning argument for the Father, because it is no longer about pointing to a destination, pointing to a way of life, it is no longer simply about revealing the heart of man, but about giving man what man dreams of himself, that is, to feel that he belongs to someone, to feel that his own life is not an abandoned life, to not feel loneliness within his own life. But, you know, when we think of love as protection, at a certain point we are disappointed, because the idea we have of protection is more or less this: if I am loved, then love will protect me from everything that can happen in life, and love will be my refuge. Then, instead, it happens that life reserves difficult things for you, that life makes you live things that you would never want to live, and you ask yourself: how is it possible that you say you love me, you who are beside me, but you cannot protect me from suffering, you cannot protect me from sadness, you cannot protect me from the adversities of life? I remember once a young man came to talk to me, completely wounded by a very difficult story, immersed in that deep darkness of depression. He said to me, Father, I feel alone. And I said to him, but I am here, and you know that I love you, you believe that I love you. And he said, I know that you love me. So why don't you save me from this anguish? Why don't you make it stop? If it is true that you love me, why don't you make all this stop? Because the God in whom you tell me to believe does not save me from this anguish, from this sadness. All of us, when we think of love, always think of it as protection. So, in reality, it is true that love protects us, but not from the adversities of life. Love does not protect us from circumstances, it does not protect us from everything that we are sometimes forced to live. No, love protects life from meaninglessness. This is the protection of love. Now I will explain it, because it may seem like a difficult phrase. The protection of love is this: as long as you are loved, what you are experiencing is always significant. When you live something but do not feel loved, what you live ceases to be significant, it no longer has meaning. A person's life is worthwhile not because there are no problems to face, but only and solely if the life you live has a sense, has a meaning. We are loved when the experience of love saves us from meaninglessness, when it saves us from that deep abyss of insignificance. This is the love that protects us. Instead, we dream of a love that lives in our place, that faces circumstances in our place, that defends us, that gets in the middle, that fights our enemies, that solves our problems, that faces those circumstances. But a love that substitutes itself for us is not love. When love wants to live life in our place to protect us, that is not love. True love never substitutes itself for us. He who loves you does not substitute himself for you. And this is also the great suffering of love, because when you care for someone, when you love someone, it almost becomes spontaneous to say: give it to me. I remember a mother, a mother with a daughter sick with cancer, who told me: every evening when I pray, I say, Lord, give me this illness, take it away from her and give it to me. This is what we dream of when we love someone. We would like to put ourselves in the place of that someone, precisely to protect them, to defend them. But true love is [Music] that framework, but never in place of. I believe that this is an immense lesson for each of us, that is, the first great conversion to which the Gospel invites us is to love, but with a love that is not reassuring, not a love that substitutes itself for us. Love is being present in a person's life to save that life from meaninglessness, from the lack of meaning, and remaining in that person's life without ever wanting to substitute oneself for that person, without ever wanting to solve that person's problems. When you remain like this and love like this, at a certain point, the second word of love begins to emanate from that person's heart, which is freedom. Only when a person feels loved does he begin to understand what freedom is. This is the great difference, because as long as we do not feel loved, we feel subservient, we feel that we are always victims, that we are always crushed by things. But when you feel loved, you regain agency, you can face things, you can realize that you can live that difficult thing, that you can even lose, that you can live the impossible. Jesus says at a certain point in the Gospel, almost exaggerating: everything is possible for those who believe. But what does faith consist of? Faith does not consist of saying God exists. He who has faith does not have the certainty that God exists. Here we can reason even by reasoning that somewhere there will be something in the universe that created us, that made all this beauty, the order of things. The heart of Christian faith is elsewhere. Our faith does not tell us that God exists; it tells us that God is our Father, that God loves us. We can say we have faith when we believe in this love. Then, Jesus says, everything is possible for those who believe. If you believe that you are loved and that God is your Father, you can do anything, you can face anything. Then one begins to discover that love is truly a path of liberation, and that it has nothing to do with our schemes, and that it has nothing to do with that entirely human, entirely psychological need to simply want to have points of support. However, several times, you see, this mentality of ours clashes with Jesus' teaching, and I would briefly like to take two great examples with you to make you understand how we clash with this mentality of Jesus when we think of love. The first time it happens that Jesus is walking, and while he was walking, his disciples fix their gaze on a man, a man who has been blind since birth. And looking at that man's suffering, which is concrete, real suffering, think about what that illness symbolizes. That is a man who is truly blind, but the real problem of blindness is when you don't know, you don't see, you can't understand where to go, what is the right thing. Very often, blindness is an existential condition: not knowing where to go, not knowing what the right thing is, not knowing why something happened. This is blindness. So the disciples, looking at this man who has been blind since birth, say to Jesus: why is this man blind? Did he make a mistake, or did his parents make a mistake? Whose fault is it? You see, brothers, this is the first great pattern that we carry within us. We always interpret suffering as guilt. We are convinced that we find relief when we suffer if we manage to blame someone, if we find the culprit, or if we feel guilty. If we manage to resolve this question of whose fault it is, whose responsibility it is, we think we will find relief. And so, faced with suffering, we spend years and years of our lives asking ourselves who is the culprit, whose fault it is. Then we begin to first feel that we are wrong, then we get angry with the people around us, then maybe we get angry with God. We spend our lives passing this blame always to someone, thinking that if finally someone says, yes, it's my fault, we will say, ah, finally I have stopped suffering because I have found a culprit. Jesus says to his disciples that it is neither the fault of that person nor the fault of his parents. Indeed, he says that fault has nothing to do with it. He says: that man is like this so that the works of God may be manifested in him, so that the glory of God may be manifested in him. And I know that you are immediately thinking of the miracle that Jesus will perform a moment later, by mixing his saliva with mud, he will put it on his eyes, and he will regain sight. From there, an immense controversy will arise over this healing. We are convinced that that man is there so that Jesus can perform the miracle. No, Jesus is saying something much deeper. He is saying that sometimes in suffering, there is not hidden a fault or a culprit, but that sometimes suffering hides a way through which God chooses to manifest himself, that God whom we do not understand and whom we cannot say why he chooses certain paths. At a certain point, he decides to manifest himself like this. Now, how do I explain this concept to you? Because it is a concept that cannot be explained, you can only encounter it. As a priest, it has happened to me several times to meet people like that, people who suffer, but in their suffering, God shows his glory, shows his works. Because when you meet a sick person, and in that sick person's suffering, you look them in the eyes, and in those eyes you do not find anger, but you find joy, you find peace. Is that not a way through which God makes himself present in that infinite joy that has no explanation, that has no culprit, that we cannot categorize anywhere? You find a person infinitely weak and infinitely entrusted, infinitely at peace. You cannot imagine the charm of these people when you meet them in their illnesses, when you meet them in the misfortunes of their families, when you meet them in their poverty, when you meet them bedridden, when you meet them in a life that has spared them nothing, but instead of finding their resentment, you find light, you find peace. They are the ones who console others, they are the ones who give strength to others, they are the ones who have words of light and courage for others. Then you see that suffering and you no longer ask yourself who is the culprit, but you understand that that man lives in that suffering and God shows his works in that suffering. But it is disappointing, because in our minds we have: I want to understand who the culprit is. I believe that this is the first great conversion that we must carry out within our lives, the first great renunciation, brothers. As long as we spend our lives reading it only with a sense of guilt, we will not understand anything about life, and we will not understand anything about God who speaks to us through life, through any fragment of life, not only through that beautiful life, that luminous life, that life that fills your heart, but also through that life that takes everything from you, that reduces you to nothing, that denies you justice, that puts you in an incomprehensible situation. God speaks to us through things, and it is not interesting to find the culprit, but to ask ourselves what God is doing within our suffering. Then you understand that perhaps the most interesting question is: what do you want from me? What do you want? What are you looking for from me? If we were freed from the sense of guilt, we would feel life in a completely different way. You know, this is such a serious problem that sometimes our faith is the reason why we come to church, or the reason why we have a spiritual life, fundamentally because we cannot get rid of the sense of guilt, and we have a life of faith to domesticate this sense of guilt. But the central message of the Gospel is exactly this: Jesus died on the cross, freeing us from guilt. We can no longer reason with guilt. Then we should perhaps look within ourselves and say: how do I look at my life? How do I look at the suffering in my life? How do I look at what bad or twisted has happened in my life? Do I look at it with a sense of guilt, simply wanting to find the culprit or feeling wrong, or do I read something deeper in what I am experiencing? It is a change of gaze, it is a change of mentality. But alongside this passage from the Gospel, I would add another beautiful, famous, and therefore dangerous one. The most well-known passages of the Gospel are those we do not listen to because we know the story and therefore we never stop at the details of these great narratives. Jesus is not simply a prophet who goes around announcing the kingdom of God. Jesus is a man, and like every man, he becomes needy of the things that men need. And what is the main thing that men seek in their lives? Bread, water. But there is something even deeper: relationships. So, Jesus, throughout his life, builds relationships, makes friends. A handful of these friends are those we know as disciples, the apostles. But he also had other friends, including Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. You know that at a certain point Lazarus falls ill and dies. But before he dies, the sisters send to call Jesus, and Jesus does not go to Lazarus's house, he does not go to Lazarus's house when Lazarus needs him, he does not go to visit Lazarus in a moment of suffering. He holds back, he stays away from that village, and when he decides to go to Bethany to visit this friend, it is already too late, Lazarus is dead. Then, the initiative of one of these sisters, Martha, leads this woman to use words that we often do not have the courage to utter in our prayers, because Martha goes to Jesus and says to Jesus: if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Do you want me to translate it better? If you had been here, that accident in which those people lost their lives would never have happened. If you had been here, I would not have lost that child. If you had been here, my father would not have treated us that way. If you had been here, I would not have done that stupid thing. If you had been here... And look, here the matter gets complicated, because if the first pattern we carry within us is to interpret everything as guilt, the second pattern that we all rightly carry within us is to say: how do we deal with the fact that you say you love us, and when we need you, you are not there? You see, brothers, I believe that the first thing we must recover is not theory or answers, but the authenticity of prayer. Martha teaches us something that we do not have the courage to do: to speak clearly with God, to tell God what we are truly feeling. Sometimes, you know why we are not well? Because we indulge everything, because we always justify everything, because we never find the courage to cry, to shout, to scream to the Lord what Martha screams to Jesus: if you had been here! If you had been here! Then Jesus says: I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will not die. And Martha is very prepared. She says: yes, I know that my brother will be resurrected on the last day. Yes, it is a story I have already heard. She is very prepared theologically. But Jesus is saying something else. He is saying that the resurrection that she is waiting for, that they are waiting for, is not a day, it is not an event, it is not at the end of life. He is that resurrection. His person is that resurrection. The person of Jesus is the answer to that question: if you had been here. Then Jesus does not answer by saying why he was not here, but Jesus shows that he was there, and he was there precisely at the moment when his presence seems useless. Here is the second pagan mechanism that we carry within us. If the first mechanism is that of guilt, the second pagan mechanism is this: God is useful as long as he can solve a problem. When problems can no longer be solved, the question is: what do we do with God? But do you understand that God is needed precisely when there is nothing left, when there is no longer any hope, when everything is lost? That is the moment when Jesus is needed, because Jesus' purpose is not to substitute himself for us, it is not to say: I will change reality. The ordinary way of inhabiting life in the world is not that of miracles, because if it were that of miracles, Jesus is the greatest injustice in history, because the big question is: why does he heal that one and not the other? Why does he resurrect that one and not the other? Because Jesus' purpose is not to solve people's problems, but to be present in people's lives precisely when they think there is nothing left, when everything is useless, when there is no longer hope. Then God begins to do what he does best: he fills with presence what we experience instead as defeat, as failure, as loneliness. You know, this disappointment is the same disappointment that our Jewish brothers experienced when, waiting for the Messiah, they expected a soldier, they expected someone who would act, someone who would do something against oppression. And what did they see instead coming towards them? A [Music] child, a poor man, a weak man, an unarmed man, a man who does not engage in politics, a man who has no weapons, a man who is so fragile that they can take him and hang him on a cross, nail him to a cross. A liberator who shows his strength in such a way is disappointing. But, you know, this is the thing that often resists within us. We do not carry the idea that God, to manifest himself to us, did so through weakness, not through strength, not through imposition. He did not show his omnipotence; he showed himself fully human, fully fragile, fully weak. But there is a lesson to be learned from this weakness. Jesus accepts to lose, accepts to be defeated, accepts to be nailed to a cross, so that none of us can ever feel alone at the exact moment when everything seems lost and everything seems useless. Then he teaches us a love that is completely different, and it is the love that tells us: I do not love you to the point of living life for you. I love you to the point where I will remain within your life, even when it is no longer convenient to remain within your life. I will be there. I will not leave. Then we can even shout at him, get angry, take it out on him, ignore him, hate him, but he will not stop being present where we thought instead that there was no one left and that there was hell. You know, this way of his of loving us is a way that perhaps in history, it has remained impressed on me. I saw a wonderful painting by Caravaggio, the Madonna of the Palafrenieri. Standing, in reality, is a Jesus who is not exactly a child, but a grown child of 23 years, and together they crush the head of the serpent. We are all accustomed, when we think of evil, to see Mary's foot crushing the serpent's head. In this scene by Caravaggio, it is Mary who crushes the serpent's head, but on Mary's foot is the foot of the Baby Jesus. This is the idea of love according to God. God does not substitute himself for your foot. You have to face the serpent, you have to face that difficult thing, but he is also on your trial. You are not alone when you face things. And precisely because you are not alone, you can face everything, even what you would never want to live, even what apparently is taking everything from you. This is the image of love. It is not an explanation. It is the way through which God says: I love you even in suffering, even in the contradiction of evil. Because God's choice, you know what it is? It is the second row, not the first row. Because people who love do not take away your agency; they leave the stage to you. Perhaps you would like to ask yourselves: how do I know if a person loves me? You know if a person loves you if they make you emerge, if they don't hide you, if they push you to bring out your talents, if they make you the protagonist of your story. This is the purpose of love. Love pushes us to become protagonists. By definition, love is never the protagonist; love is always in the second row, a step behind you, so that you can emerge. This is what God has done with each of us. But behind this apparent disinterest, there is actually a secret hidden: it is the secret of a love that is beside you, precisely at the exact moment when you experience hell and the feeling of loneliness. I thought at this point to take another, one last little piece of the Gospel to show you what Jesus' attitude is in the face of life's injustices, and you find it in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 7. Jesus performs a miracle that is apparently quite quick, but with a modality, with a timing, with a gesture that is truly a message. Listen: "After this, Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him." Keep in mind Luke, that is, the Gospel of Luke, it is said that he is a painter. Now, if we were to use a more contemporary image, we would say that Luke writes his Gospel as if it were a film scene, as if it were a painting. So, when you read Luke, you must always imagine how he edits the scenes. On one side, there is Jesus walking with his disciples and a large crowd. The second part of this image: "As he approached the gate of the town, a dead person was being carried out to be buried—an only son of his mother, and she was a widow; and a considerable number of people from the town was with her." There are two processions, two groups of people, one facing the other, and at a certain point they cross paths as they arrive in front of the town. They are going out to bury this young man, and Jesus encounters this funeral procession. Listen to what happens: "When the Lord saw her, he was moved with pity for her and said to her, 'Do not cry.'" He went up and touched the bier, while those who carried it stood still. Then he said, "Young man, I say to you, arise." The dead man sat up and began to speak, and he gave him to his mother. Awe came upon all, and they glorified God, saying, "A great prophet has arisen among us!" and "God has visited his people!" And this report about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding region." This is the story. Now let's slow down and see what emerges from this account. There is a mother who is suffering. What is greater than the pain of a mother, the pain of a parent? Nothing. This woman also carries another pain: her husband has also died, and so this woman finds herself with the drama of having lost a life partner and the drama of having lost her future. This woman is in hell, she is completely alone and isolated. I don't know if it struck you too, but this is one of the few miracles that Jesus performs without anyone professing faith. This suffering woman does not speak, does not pray, asks for nothing. Jesus cries, and that's it. I believe this is important news for each of us, beautiful. Sometimes life takes everything from you, even faith. It takes away your words. You no longer have prayers. You don't even know what to ask for anymore. You are just a bundle of suffering. And the Gospel says that Jesus notices her. Friends, our suffering is never unobserved by God. God always notices our suffering, even when we cannot express it, even when we find ourselves in a dead end, feel imprisoned, even when we don't know how to get out of it. It is he who notices us, even if we have no faith. And do not be scandalized, because God does not only love those who have faith; God loves everyone. He loves even those who do not have it, because they have lost it, because they have abandoned it, because no one has transmitted it to them, because they have not had this gift. God notices the pain of this woman, and this is the first great, beautiful news of the Gospel: that in pain, we are observed, we are not alone. But there is a involvement of Jesus' whole person. Listen: "When the Lord saw her, he was moved with pity for her." Tears come to his eyes. He is wounded by this woman, and he said to her, "Do not cry." Look, there are already two things involved: Jesus' eyes and mouth. He went up, Jesus' feet touched the bier, Jesus' hands. The carriers stopped. Then he said again: "Young man, I say to you, arise." The dead man sat up and began to speak. He took him by the hand, and returned him to his mother. Jesus' entire person—his eyes, mouth, feet, hands—is involved in this woman's suffering. Do you know why Luke describes this scene this way? To tell us that God does not respond to people's pain with words and theories. God does not respond to my suffering with theology. God responds to my suffering with an experience. He completely involves himself in what I am living, and in what I am living, he does something that makes my suffering touched by him. It's a bit like saying that none of us can understand God in suffering until we experience it, until we realize how the man Jesus—eyes, mouth, feet, hands, his whole person—is involved in this woman's pain. You will tell me: well, it's a story that ends well, because he didn't touch the biers of all the children, he brought them back to life. Here the Gospel wants to say something else. We are children of one who has power over what makes us suffer. We are children of one who can tell us to put a limit to our pain. Only he can tell us not to cry, because no one can dare to go to a mother who has lost a child and tell that mother not to cry. She has every right to cry. But Jesus is the only one who manages to curb, to curb that woman's suffering. So, we have said many things to say perhaps the most important thing: until we encounter the person of Jesus Christ, this question will remain useless, irritating philosophy. Until we encounter the person of Jesus Christ, we will not find a response worthy of such a question. And this is the great desire that we must carry in our hearts: not to find a way not to suffer, but to find a way to encounter the person of Jesus precisely at the exact moment when everything seems lost, everything seems against us. While I was preparing these words for you this evening, a story came back to my mind with great power. Perhaps you read it in the newspapers a few weeks ago. Most of the television news, newspapers, and the internet were buzzing with this news: a young footballer named Custodero died of cancer at 27 years old. How many young people die of this horrible illness, which is cancer? Yet, the story of this young man had moved everyone, because as an athlete, he tried until the end to fight this disease truly heroically. But a moment came when, tired, he realized he could do nothing more. He asked to live his last days, which were Christmas days, lucidly with his family, and then he asked to be sedated because the suffering was too great. You know that, thank God, pain therapy helps us to face even in this way sufferings that are sometimes unspeakable and that illness makes us experience. What moved me was not so much the fact that a young man at 27 died of cancer. What moved me was reading in one of these newspapers the description of the last moments of this young man before being sedated and before dying. He looked at his mother and said to his mother: "Hold me tight," and he let himself be embraced by his mother, and then he died. This is the Gospel. None of us is capable of facing death. None of us is capable of facing such difficult things. But if there is someone willing to embrace us, we are capable of facing even such a thing. This is what God has chosen for us. He sent his son Jesus so that each of us, in the most difficult moments, can feel so embraced that we can say: now I am willing even to lose, now I am ready even to die, because there is someone here, there is a presence that makes even the impossible possible. Where was Jesus while Giovanni was suffering? He was in the arms of that mother, but he was also hidden in the suffering of this young man. Friends, Christianity is not the preaching of an abstract thought; it is the encounter with a God who, in the most concrete things of our lives, makes a difference. Until we have eyes that function well enough to make us notice this presence in our lives, everything will seem difficult and everything will seem impossible. But if our eyes can see this presence, and they will see it in the affection of friends, in the clasped hands of people who love us, in someone's faithfulness, in short, in all the thousands of ways that God invents to be present in our lives, if our eyes see this, then everything is possible for those who believe, everything, even to lose. I believe that this is the only great reason why all of us this evening should go home saying: how do we get eyes like these to notice something like this? This is the only reason that should push us to pray. Prayer helps us to make functional a gaze that sees beyond things, to make us notice what we usually cannot see. Prayer trains us to see all this presence that completely changes a person's life. I think that Giovanni, in that moment, amidst that suffering and that unjust death, noticed Jesus present in his mother's arms. I wish you to have arms like these in the difficult moments of your life. I wish you to be able to touch Jesus. But the big question is: are we willing to lend our arms so that others can find in us that Jesus who fills their lives with presence? We can even get angry with heaven, but sometimes heaven, to answer our prayers, is thinking of us. But are we willing to be that sign, to be the tangible sign of that presence? I cannot answer this question, but I know for sure that our God, even if he does not answer with words, always knows how to answer with facts, and for me, that is enough and more than enough. Thank you.