Why is there pain? What is the meaning of suffering? Is it possible to have a life without these realities?
These questions are always with us and we cannot resolve them. At times, to catch our breath, we seek out an anesthetic, like that proposed by an aphorism of the Eastern philosophy attributed to Buddha: “Ninety loves, ninety pains. Thirty loves, thirty pains. One love, one pain. No love, no pain.” It would be the only possible response, if our life was lived in solitude: learning to not love. It certainly would not be reasonable, but perhaps it would be our only possibility.
One of the characteristic traits of the colonial Baroque art that I got to know in Latin America is realism, the insistence with which it represents suffering. It is an artistic style that corresponds to a religious sensibility. I was able to see it when I was a pastor in Bogota. The most represented scene is the passion of Jesus. The statues are decorated with clothes and real hair and seek to show, in a way that is close to reality, the wounds of forty strikes of the whip on the body of Our Lord, and the same with the expressions, the emotions. Same with His pain. Every year, during Holy Week, all of the Colombian people relive in the churches and on the streets the mysteries of the Passion. The gaze of everyone is magnetized by those wounds: I always asked myself why.
Without a doubt, however, the most important statue is “The Sorrowful Mother.” It is the image of the Blessed Mother who was in tears before the cross on which hung Her Son. In our parish in Bogota, that statue is exposed only during Holy Week. Two women are tasked with preparing it, adorning it with real hair and dressing it with long robes of black velvet. She has in her hands a white handkerchief with which she collects the dying blood of her Son, and on her cheeks, there are tears that are never dried and remind us of the sword that has pierced her heart. Affection for her is so great that the women, when they dress her, spread lotion on her face and hands, as if they were taking care of her skin. Those who enter into the church on those days go to visit her and light a candle. Then, on Holy Saturday, they gather to pray and observe silence before Her, to accompany her but also to look upon her. To understand her pain.
During Holy Week, we see God enter into our pain, taking it on Himself; He lets Himself be disfigured by betrayal and abandonment. He desired to follow this path too, so as to not abandon us in the fears of our own solitude. He did not want to avoid pain. He was not afraid to love us. Once, thirty times, ninety times. This is the force that attracts on Himself our gaze and that moves all of the Colombian people to walk together with Him.
How many times did Mary see her Son enter into the pain of other men! When He was small, and then when He got older. How many times was she moved by the certainty with which He took evil upon Himself, opening the doors to a truer life! Even She looked at the wounds of Our Lord; she had looked upon them during all of her life and she had seen His love.
She learned to love from Him. And this is how she was found under the cross. She had learned from Him how to love and so she loved Him to the very end. She accompanied Him even in that terrible moment, when she saw his flesh lacerated under the braids of the whip and then under the weight of the cross. It strikes us to see the certainty with which Mary carried that pain. She did not know how it would have happened and for this reason she felt as if a sword was piercing her, but she also knew that her son would defeat death. And so her pain became expectation.
Our eyes are fixed on her and so is our heart. Instead of explaining the meaning of pain, or trying to dull it, the “Sorrowful Mother” enters into our suffering with her white handkerchief and her tears, and waits with us for the victory of her Son. We can learn to wait for it together with her.
The experiences shared in this edition of Fraternity and Mission help us to enter into the mystery of pain, through the eyes of our priests and the persons that we have encountered.
