Eleventh Station - Jesus is Nailed to the Cross

Luke 23:33-34

The pain of those nails almost made me black out.  They were blunt Roman spikes that seemed to crush rather than pierce the flesh and bone.  Yet it was not so much that pain I felt.  It was the agony that welled up at the thought of what was happening.  “Why, Father?  Why these nails in my hands?”…

Let me tell you the difference between pain and suffering.  Pain is the blind impersonal clashing of forces that is universal.  Suffering is uniquely human.  A plant or an animal may be in pain, but there is not suffering as we experience it.  Suffering springs from a mind capable of turning raw pain into agony by asking why.  Why is this happening to me?  Must it happen.  Is it fair?

That is why you must never underestimate the degree of suffering of any of your brothers or sisters.  If you look only at their pain, you may wonder what they have to complain about.  “I’ve had much worse,” you may say.  But you cannot see their suffering.  You don’t know how sensitive they are, how quickly their pain can become insufferable agony.  Instead of judging, do what you can to relieve both their pain and their suffering.  That is why, too, that you must never underestimate the power of my suffering.  No one sustained more pain than I.  But pain was not the issue.  Suffering was.  My suffering was infinite because my capacity to ask why was infinite and my love for you was infinite.