STIGMATA
A Lenten Reflection
by Deacon Bruce Olsen
Stigmata – Wounds…Bleeding wounds…Painful wounds…Wounds on the hands…Wounds on the feet…A wound on the side of the chest. Miraculously appearing wounds. Christ’s wounds, which have become the wounds of those who have chosen, in a radical way, to take up the cross and follow Him. To suffer as He suffered. To be a visible reminder to the world of sacrificial wounds, of love-endured pain, in the name of mercy…in the name of redemption. And so, the stigmatist bleeds, he suffers, he offers his pain, he offers his disfigurement, to unite his own blood and his own suffering to the blood shed and the agony endured, to the ultimate sin atonement, to the unconditional, underserved, unwarranted love-embrace of a Man, of a God, two thousand years ago on a hill called Golgotha. For you…For me. Stigmata.
Twelfth century mystic, St. Bernard of Clairvoix, had the spiritual gift of locution – he could converse with Jesus on a deeper level than we do when we pray. Whereas, in prayer, we are able to hear the whispers of Jesus deep within us, St. Bernard could hear the actual audible voice of Christ speaking to him. One day, in conversation with our Lord, he asked Him which of the wounds He suffered in His Passion caused Him the greatest pain. Was it the wounds from the nails that were driven into His hands and feet? Was it the wounds from the crown of thorns that punctured the flesh on His head? Or was it, perhaps, the gaping wound left by the lance thrust into His side? Our Lord responded to him, “I had on My shoulder as I bore My cross on the Way of Sorrows, a grievous wound that was more painful than the others, which is not recorded by men.”
If the truth of Jesus’ words to St Bernard needed to be verified, in April 1948, Fr. Karol Wojtyla visited Padre Pio, who bore the wounds of Christ on his body for fifty years. The future St. Pope John Paul II asked the stigmatist which of his wounds caused the most pain, expecting that Padre Pio would say it was the chest wound. But instead, Padre Pio replied, “It is my shoulder wound, which no one knows about and has never been cured or treated.”
In the history of the Church, there have been about three hundred cases of individuals who bore stigmata on their bodies. Most, if any, of us will ever bear the wounds and know the pain of Christ on our hands and feet, forehead and side the way the stigmatists have. But, in a sense, all those who have accepted Jesus’ command to pick up our crosses daily and follow Him are stigmatists.
The prophet Isaiah, wrote, “It was our weaknesses that he carried, our sufferings that he endured…He was pierced for our offences, crushed for our sins.” (Isaiah 53: 4-5). And in the First Letter of Peter, we read, “He himself bore our sins in his body upon the cross…By his wounds you have been healed. (1 Peter 2:24). And so, there is a great reciprocity in picking up our crosses daily, for, in uniting our sufferings to His, we bear the wounds Christ bore for us.
The stigmata that many of us bear is the shoulder wound, for we have felt, live with, that jutting, intense, raw, unrelenting, merciless, down to the bone pain that has cut deep into us from the crosses that have been thrust upon our shoulders. That wound takes on different shapes: It might be the intense pain of illness…or the still bleeding, oozing wound of a failed marriage or relationship…Maybe it’s the prolonged and nagging hurt from the death of someone we love…It could be the relentless, torturous pain of addiction…or the unbearable pang of depression and hopelessness…the stinging pain of unemployment…or the chronic wound of guilt, self-hatred, horrific memories that we can’t let go of, or the sins of our past that we can’t forgive ourselves of. Stigmata.
Our cross, valiantly born, united to Jesus, becomes the cross He bore. And so, the pain we bear is truly His. Our pains, our wounds, often well hid from others, but always felt by ourselves, is the deep, cutting, bloody, infected, torturous, unrelenting wound on Jesus’ shoulder. But like Him, when Jesus commands us to take up our cross and follow Him, our journey doesn’t end on a Friday, at Golgotha, in pain, death and defeat. It ends at an empty tomb, on a Sunday, in resurrection, in healing, in new life. And although the scar may remain, it has been transformed into a badge of victory!
Wounds…Jesus’ wounds…Wounds on His hands…Wounds on His feet…Wounds which surrounded His head…A wound in His side…A wound on His shoulder. But there is another wound from which Jesus suffered. It is the wound He endured the longest, from Thursday night to Friday afternoon. From Gethsemane to Golgotha. From a blood-sweat prayer of “Not my will but Your will be done,” to a prayer of victorious surrender, “Father, into Your hands I commend my Spirit.”
It is a wound not visible to the human eye. One not evident to those who witnessed His Passion; one few, even to this day, recognize. Yet it was a wound as gruesome and as agonizing as any inflicted upon His Body. It is the interior wound of loneliness, abandonment, and rejection. Unseen by others, but oh so excruciatingly felt by Him.
It is the pain He felt in the Garden of Gethsemane, when the Apostles, those closest in His heart, those who were with Him day in and day out for three years, lie but yards away from Him, yet are so totally unaware and insensitive to the sheer terror that He feels that they even fall asleep.
It is the pain of having someone, called by Jesus to intimacy, betray Him through the charade of a kiss.
It is the pain of His closest friends running away, abandoning Him when He needed them most.
It is the pain of someone loved, trusted, favored, not only distancing himself from Him, but denying he even knows Him.
It is the pain of courts of judgement, the Sanhedrin and the Roman Procurator, those for whom it is easier to condemn than to understand, scrutinizing, twisting, and misinterpreting everything He said, everything He did.
It is the pain, as He carried the cross, of seeing familiar faces, those He taught and touched and healed – those who shouted “Hosanna to the Son of David” the previous Sunday, who now cry out, “Crucify Him;” those that were once sightless, who now are blind to who He really is, and see, instead, only one who is guilty, one who deserves a wretched fate; those that were once mute, whose mouths now form words of taunt, and mockery and scorn; those whose hearing He restored, whose ears are now deaf to His cries of anguish and pain; those who were once lame, whose hearts are now paralyzed by insensitivity for the very one who lifted them from their stretchers; those who He brought back to life, whose hearts have become stone and no longer beat with love for the One who loved them first, with a love greater than they had ever known.
It is the pain of, after being followed by thousands throughout Galilee and Judea, dying all alone in the world, save four who faithfully keep vigil at His cross.
It is the pain of the fear, the wondering, if even God, His Father, has now abandoned Him.
It is a pain, not of a lance-punctured heart, but of a broken heart.
A wound, hidden to those who see things only on the surface. A wound visible only to those who possess eyes of love, of sensitivity, of compassion which probe deeper, beyond flesh and bones, muscle and sinew, to see the heart.
The wound of loneliness, abandonment, rejection. This is Jesus’ wound I have been asked to bear. Thank you, Lord, for allowing me to share in Your Passion. Thank you, Lord, for sharing in mine. Stigmata.
