Here’s a quote from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “If we could
read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each person’s life
sorrow and suffering enough to disarm any hostility.”
And here’s something my juniormaster often used to say to me
back in the 80’s: “You never know what kind of burden the other person may be
carrying around.”
Well, some times I got to find out. More than once I’ve
experienced being part of a support group or an encounter group, or a
faith-sharing group where the group of strangers I was sitting with gradually
became a group of peers as each of us took a risk and shared some of our own
pain and struggles with the others. These unifying experiences were full of
grace.
Become sensitive to that pain and those burdens and you grow
closer to Christ, who made the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of that pain. “Because
of the ontological unity of Christ with the whole human race, the sacrifice was
a bloody crucifixion. United with us in being and in love, Christ took on
himself all the hatred, rebellion, derision, despair (‘My God, my God, why has
thou forsaken me?’)—all the murders, all the suicides, all the tortures, all
the agonies of all humanity through all time and all space. In all these Christ
bled, suffered, cried out in aguish and desolation. . . . At that moment death is swallowed up in
life, the abyss of hatred is lost in the bottomless depths of love.” (Olivier
Clement: The Roots of Christian Mysticism, p. 44)
Sense the pain in the other, even if you do not know the
specifics. When you are able to do that, then the other is no longer THEM but
becomes part of US. And the cross takes on a newer, more poignant significance
for you.
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