Painful perfection: in Jesus we see the transfiguration of inevitable human suffering

As it was his purpose to bring a great many of his sons into glory, it was appropriate that God, for whom everything exists and through whom everything exists, should make perfect, through suffering, the leader who would take them to their salvation. For the one who sanctifies, and the ones who are sanctified, are of the same stock. (Hebrews 2:10-11)

Why does today’s second reading at Mass say that Jesus’s suffering was “appropriate”? The cross was appalling torture and Christ was not only innocent but divine. At first glance it seems wholly inappropriate.

The reading’s final phrase describes His solidarity with us: God incarnate shares our human nature, apart from original sin and its consequences. Because of our fallen state, suffering is inevitable for us. God respected our first parents’ freedom to disobey Him and so He respects all the effects of that abused freedom: sin, suffering and death. 

But, as this reading highlights, God is the one “for whom everything exists and through whom everything exists”, so by His providence He can make our sufferings redemptive rather than senseless.

Yet God does not simply arrange all the painful events of life to make them chances for our salvation. He sends His divine Son as one of us and perfects Him “through suffering” to be our “leader”. Blameless, He had no need to suffer, but the Father made suffering the means of His human perfection. Later in this letter we read that “He learned obedience through what He suffered; and being made perfect He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him” (Hebrews 5:8-9).

Jesus knows what it is like to suffer in body and mind, and He makes our suffering something that not only redeems us but even perfects us, as His pain perfected Him.

It is hard to embrace this teaching, especially when it involves the anguish of breakdown in marriage. Jesus is utterly clear about the nature of marriage in this Gospel: “The man who divorces his wife and marries another is guilty of adultery against her. And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another she is guilty of adultery too” (Mark 10:11-12).

Jesus also teaches us, however, by word and gesture, to embrace His kingdom as if it were a small child. If we can realise that God’s will for us is as beautiful as a child, even if it involves deep pain, then we can embrace it, trusting in Jesus’s compassion.

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