Healing from the hurt

I have always been fascinated by the notion that healing can come from the very elements that hurt us. I first encountered this idea when I worked in a parish in Boston named for St. Raphael, which features beautiful stained-glass windows depicting the Book of Tobit from the Hebrew scriptures. One figure in that story, Tobias, wards off an attack by a fish. On the advice of the angel Raphel, Tobias saves the fish's body, which ultimately brings healing and salvation to the woman he loves and to his father.

We receive that same message, that healing can come from an assailant, every Lent when we read from the Book of Numbers and hear that the Israelites were healed from snake bites by looking at a bronze image of the snakes mounted on a pole. Here, Moses tells the people, as St. Raphael will later in the story of Israel, that our wounds can mysteriously play a role in our salvation.

Of course, no story conveys that message more powerfully than the Passion of Jesus Christ, whereby the cross, his society's ultimate image of fear and suffering, mysteriously becomes the most powerful symbol of salvation for Christians. I think of this every Good Friday, when worshippers venerate the cross with a kiss, a touch, or a bow. It is an incredibly moving sight, when gestures convey more than words ever could. People are certainly uniting their suffering and sorrows with those of Jesus - but not in a mournful way, for they seem to walk away enlivened and empowered. Through Christ's Paschal Mystery, their wounds are healed and their lives are saved.

On Good Friday, we will accompany our Savior in his suffering and death. But on a deeper level, he will accompany us, as his cross transforms suffering into salvation, and terror into triumph. The last hymn Rev. Fred Zagone, S.J., chose for his funeral last Friday told us to "lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaim," and one verse spoke of people being "led on their way by this triumphant sign." Thanks, Father Fred, for your parting reminder, and for your personal witness to the mysterious interplay of suffering and salvation.