“It is impossible to describe the feeling that comes over you at such a time. The feeling that somehow, in an instant of time, everything is changed and nothing again will ever be the same. That tomorrow will never again be like yesterday. That the very trees, the grass, the air, the daylight are no longer the same, for the world has changed. It is a feeling impossible to describe, and yet one that every wife who has lost a husband knows well, one that every child who has tasted evil for the first time or faced a sudden crisis has experienced. It is that feeling that leaves the heart saying, ‘Oh, if only I could turn back the clock to before it happened, if only it had never happened, if only I had it to do over again.'”
—Fr. Walter Ciszek, He Leadeth Me
We all have these moments, big and small, when something happens and we instantly wish it never had. We become bitter about these frustrating, senseless realities, or otherwise live in denial about them. But reality is the only place where we can meet God. Some things cannot be undone, and if we can’t come to grips with these events, we may never discover the greater purpose they will serve in our lives.
I once heard a priest give a homily about this human tendency to deny reality, to have difficulty reconciling our daydreams with the real world and grappling with the truth. When reality doesn’t meet our expectations, it’s easy to become discouraged. But the priest instructed us: “Don’t say, ‘This is not happening.’ It’s happening. Let it unfold.” Bad things will happen; we can’t avoid that fact. But God can use anything for good, and we won’t find out how until we let go of our disappointment and watch our lives unfold. If we have a “perfect” vision of the future, it will almost certainly be crushed in some way. But things in this life are not meant to be perfect.
When Jesus was brutally crucified, His perfect hands were pierced through with nails; His spirit was crushed; His Blood soaked the ground. When He rose from the dead, He didn’t undo this horrific and brutal injustice; He didn’t erase it—all of His suffering had still happened. He did not undo the Fall; He didn’t erase the existence of sin in the world and in human history. Gross injustice and tragedy still go on every day in this world. But He did redeem His crucifixion beyond what anyone thought possible: He triumphed over it, over all sin; He opened the gates of Heaven for all who followed Him away from the pain of sin and toward the light.
Through His sacrifice, Jesus bathed the earth in mercy to cover sin. He modeled forgiveness, even to His tormentors, to show us how to let go of the weight of our pain so that we can rise up into His Kingdom. And even in Heaven, even with His body healed and radiantly new, He keeps the holes in His pierced hands as a reminder of the suffering He endured for us and how He loves us. His scars do not need to be erased—and neither do ours. They are part of His story of redemption, and they show us that He would never want to undo what He suffered for us.
When we become overwhelmed by feelings of despair over painful events we have experienced, or overcome with regret over our past sins, we can reflect upon the pierced hands of Jesus and take comfort in the fact that He, too, walked that path before us.
Recently I walked outside and found myself in the middle of a downpour. As I struggled to keep my umbrella open against the wind and felt the puddle water seep through my shoes, I turned to Jesus and asked for comfort in the storm. And then I realized that I should reverse my thinking: Jesus was within me, through the Eucharist. He was walking through the rain, too, suffering as He had so many times in His earthly life. And this time, I was being given the chance to accompany Him on His journey instead of leaving Him out in the cold, to comfort and console the One who loves me beyond measure, who is worthy of all consolation but was denied it in His life. Offering up my suffering was an amazing gift, an opportunity to serve Jesus in His own suffering.
Jesus promises us eternal life and happiness with Him, but that will come beyond this life. For now, we are the Church Militant, fighting the good fight and trusting in Him through every difficulty, keeping in mind the words of St. Thérèse of Lisieux: “This world is thy ship, not thy home.”
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1. Titian, Incredulity of Saint Thomas / PD-1923
