Witness of Suffering

A NOTE FROM OUR PUBLISHER

(photo: EWTN)

As we embark on Passion Sunday and Holy Week, I challenge you, if you haven’t already done so, to retreat from the assault of noise and confusion from social media and popular culture and draw your heart and mind to encounter Christ.

Pope Benedict XVI spent his papacy urging us to “see the face of Christ” as he truly is. It is important to note that, while our culture spends billions of dollars to alleviate all kinds of suffering, Christ offers us a paradigm for suffering that is redemptive. In these final days before Easter, let us try to imitate him, to figuratively walk with him on the Way of the Cross. Whether the sufferings we offer to God are large or small, the Church teaches us that they join to the sufferings of Christ for the redemption of the world.

In his three-part volume Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI presciently writes, “Ultimately, in the battle against lies and violence, truth and love have no other weapon than the witness of suffering.” 

Let us commit his words to memory, trust in their meaning, and put them into practice during Holy Week — and beyond.

God bless you!