Our Lord and Pain

 One of life's great scandals is pain, not only in ourselves, but in others. Pain will always be a trouble for the human mind as well as for the human body. How did our Lord look upon pain? When he went into the garden of Gethsemane on Holy Thursday night, there was an alternative presented to him: the alternative of the sword and the cup. Our Blessed Lord had before him, as it were, the cup of all the world's sin, which he would drink to its dregs in order that no other redeemer would be needed. As he abandoned himself to his Father's will, coming down on that moonlit night was a band of about two hundred, led by Judas.  Peter took out a sword to defend Jesus. And our Lord said to Peter, 'Put the sword back again into its scabbard. They who take the sword will perish by the sword. Shall I not drink the cup my Father gave?' My Father? Not Pilate, not Herod, not you and me, not the people? Is this the cup the loving Father gives? That's precisely the point. All pains, all trials of life, pass through God's hands first before they ever come to us. Before Satan could strike Job, God reviewed the punishments that Satan would visit upon Job and said, 'You may touch everything except his soul.' And so now our Blessed Lord is saying, 'The pains that we have are seen and known by the Father.' That was the way he looked on pain.