Phileena has served with WMF in the US from 1996 to the present. Her article appeared in The Cry, vol. 7, no. 4 (Winter 2001).
In the dark of night, he lays on the cold, dirty pavement. His fragile body is shivering. I reach out to him and discover he is burning with fever and suffering from dysentery. My new, young friend cannot speak and instead communicates with me through his desperate, innocent eyes.
Weeks before, I had met this boy at the Chennai International Airport. In his rags for clothes, he greeted us with his big eyes and the brightest smile I have ever known. Unlike the other children on the street, this boy never asked us for a thing. He warmly welcomed us with his kind smile and loving gestures, never speaking a word.
This was now the third or fourth time I had encountered this boy at the airport. We tried desperately to get information about him to see if there was something we could do, but no one knew anything about him. Seemingly deaf and mute, he couldn’t tell us anything. Sick and alone with no family, his frail body lay on the pavement and grew weaker with every breath.
Suffering. What do I really know of suffering? Kind friends sometimes remark on the sacrifices we make to live and work among the poor, suggesting that we suffer. Though the sacrifices we make are often painful, we recognize the greater suffering that our brothers and sisters live through everyday. It is their suffering that moves us to willingly make sacrifices.
Christ’s words challenge us: “Greater love has no one than this, that they lay down their life for their friends” (Jn. 15:15). And in his epistle, John writes, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for one another” (1 Jn. 3:16).
Because Christ laid down his life for us, we are moved to do the same for others. When I have been so loved by Christ, how can I not love my neighbors in the same way? We echo the apostle Paul, “Christ’s love compels us…and he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again (2 Cor. 5:14-15).”
We love because God first loved us. Jesus has shown us the way to live. But do we understand what it meant for him to lay down his life? Imagine the sacrifices of all his privilege as the Son of God that Christ made for us. Paul’s letter to the Philippians tells us how Christ laid down his life to the point of death. Scripture describes how he became poor and intimately familiar with suffering.
The apostle Peter tells us, “To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.” (1 Pet. 2:21) Jesus not only shows us the way of compassion and hope and healing, but also challenges us to lay down our life and to suffer with those who suffer.
In meekness and vulnerability, the young South Indian boy at Chennai International Airport asks me if I am willing to lay down my life for him. But more than that, if I listen carefully, I can hear him asking if I’m willing to suffer with him. Am I willing to somehow embrace his suffering to the point that it becomes my own? If I am, than this suffering can become a celebration because it presses both of us closer to the Suffering Servant that the prophet Isaiah speaks about, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.